Windows Phone 7 Apps are Cheapest of All

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Distimo.com provides in-depth, analytical reports for companies interested in the mobile application ecosystem, giving valuable insight into important trends happening within application stores. To uncover the following data, Distimo examined the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace during November 1 – 22, 2010 in the US.

According to their report, apps for Windows Mobile 6.x are the most expensive, costing an average of $6.27 and Windows Phone 7 applications are much lower than those for Microsoft's previous mobile operating system - in fact, WP7 apps are the cheapest of all the major application stores, with an average price of $1.95. Compare that to Apple, who’s paid apps average $4 each. This is great for the sale of the WP7 OS, particularly considering the contrast with Windows Mobile. The next cheapest app market is that of Palm, whose apps cost an average of about $2.30 each.

When it comes to the most popular paid applications, WP7 is right on track here, too. 57% of the 100 most popular applications are below $2.00. In other stores, this is between 51% and 67%, except for Windows Mobile, where just 37% of the top 100 were priced under $2.00.

While the average price of paid apps is the lowest ($1.95, as reported above), the average price of the 100 most popular paid applications on Windows Phone 7 is $2.54 - less than the average price of $3.05 in all other stores, but more expensive than those found on the iPhone.

When you look at the price distribution of paid applications, it's easy to see how WP7 differs from the rest. It has more paid apps under $2.00 than anyone else, a decent showing in the $2.00-$4.00 range, a few in the $5.00-$9.99 range and none more over $9.99 at all.

In addition to application pricing, Distimo also examined app popularity. Here it found that the "Games" and "Tools" are the two categories on WP7 with the largest number of apps. This is a similar trend to WP7's predecessor, Windows Mobile. However, there are other categories where WP7 has significantly more apps than Windows Mobile - "Business and Finance," for example, has 78% more apps than Windows Mobile and "News & Weather" has 92% more apps

"Games" is the most popular category of all on Windows Phone 7 with prices ranging from $2.99-$6.99. 40% of the top 100 apps are games and 10 of the most popular paid applications on Windows Phone 7 are games (the first 3 paid apps were Bejeweled LIVE, Need for Speed Undercover and Flight Control. This mirrors a similar trend in Apple's app market, where games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope dominate. The second most popular category in WP7 is Entertainment with 12% of the most popular applications originating from this category.

But, before labeling WP7 Marketplace as the 'most affordable app store’, a number of factors should be taken into account. First of all, there are only 3000 apps in the WP7 Marketplace, which limits the sample size. More expensive games and utilities might still be in development, while cheaper, more easily ported apps came to market more quickly. As such, the higher averages of other operating systems include super-expensive apps, like a $300 piano tuner for iOS or the $600 Fortunatus app for BlackBerry.

The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace opened on October 21st, 2010. There are currently more than 3,000 applications in this Marketplace and more than 15,000 developers have signed up to write applications for the platform.

The big price differences between Windows Phone and Windows Mobile and the larger amount of gaming and entertainment applications, all mirror the way that Microsoft is attempting to position WP7 as a more consumer-oriented platform. Microsoft is making a big push to promote the Windows Phone 7 this holiday season. The company is integrating applications in Bing Visual Search results, as well as within the Xbox dashboard.

Source: ReadWriteWeb