When the iPhone App Store launched last Friday along with the new 3G iPhone, free apps made up 24 percent of the 552 apps available. In other words, the most popular price point was free. The rest of the apps ranged in price from 99 cents to $9.99 and even more. Instead of dictating a uniform price, as he did with music, Steve Jobs let the market decide what price apps should go for.
The market is already doing that sorting. According to Greg Yardley at Pinch Media, as of this morning there were 798 iPhone apps available through the App Store on iTunes, and only 20 percent (161 apps) are free. The most popular price point is now 99 cents, with 24 percent (188 apps). The second most popular is $9.99 with 12 percent (96 apps, including Enigmo, an addictive puzzle game, and the handy GuitarToolkit). See the price distribution chart above.
All the other price points are shifting to either 99 cents or $9.99, implying that the sweet spot is 99 cents for most apps just as it is for songs. But with the caveat that if your app is good enough people will be price insensitive. Below is the price distribution of iPhone apps the day of launch, for comparison purposes.
First
More about iPhone apps : http://liviux.b...com/tag/iphone/
how many of the 99 cent apps are all the books you can “buy” to read? (you can just use my site and read them free).
those thing totally polluted the app store and now they’re probably polluting your numbers. would be interesting to see the numbers with all that crap filtered out.
99 cents for an app is decent, provided it does something useful.
Anything over that is too much.
And that is exactly how Apple is going to make big bucks with the App Store.
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About iPhone apps : http://liviux.b...com/tag/iphone/
$1 top price for the most useful apps? I have to disagree. $100 isn’t too much for an app if it’s useful enough to justify the price. I’ve so far paid for two apps (games): Enigmo and Super Monkey Ball. Latter I wouldn’t have bought had I had a change to try it first, it’s surprisingly tricky to keep level. I love Enigmo.
Who’s the one guy charging $79.99, and what’s the app? I’m a little stumped as to what kind of iPhone app would be worth eighty bucks.
To call this a “market” analysis is an embarrassment. First, the only market being analyzed is the developers – the ones pricing the applications, not the consumers paying money for it. Absent information on installs of Free vs Paid applications, or disbursement of downloads across price points, there is no data here other than what developers “think” their applications will sell for.
That’s like saying that most people prefer unsigned, unknown bands because there are more of them on MySpace.
At least acknowledge that all this is is a bar chart of application disbursement at each price point, nothing more, nothing less.
On another note – what’s the analysis on developers posting multiple versions of an application at various price points to test the pain threshold (and discourage competitors by simulating a crowded field)?
Who’s the one guy charging $79.99, and what’s the app?
The smartest developer approved
Neat. That bump at $29 has gotta be OmniFocus.
#9 has a point. Knowing what people “think” their app is worth is one thing, but the market sorting out what the price points will be is going to be determined by where the apps are selling.
The stock market is made up of plenty of people trying to sell things at all kinds of prices, but the market price is the one at which a sale occurs.
I agree w/ DashGo – as far as analysis goes, this is a D+ at best. Comments like “most popular price point” and “price insensitive” display a serious lack of analytical rigor. This kind of analysis would be laughed at in ECON 101, let along any real-world setting.
Come on TechCrunch – stick to *tech* reporting, economics isn’t your strong suit if this is the best you can do.
All of the above comments are completely fair – we do our best with the publicly-accessible data, but only have insight into the download and activity numbers of a relatively small percentage of applications at the moment, and I’m not comfortable making more rigorous pronouncements about the shape of the market based off of that alone.
The above only documents application pricing movements – which I think is interesting in its own right, because developers are obviously attempting to maximize their return given the limited amount of data they (and we) have.
In the months ahead, Pinch Media will be able to give a much more nuanced analysis. In the meantime – yeah, I completely understand your desire for more data.
looks like a bunch of .99 apps hit the market….
So, it is iPhone users that are not affected by global economic crisis..
@Greg – thanks for the feedback. While it’s true that no sales or comprehensive download info exists, a more interesting approach might be to plot the distribution of price points on a daily basis since launch. That would better illustrate your argument that applications are skewing towards a pay-per-download model. Although it’s still impacted by Apple’s non-transparent approval process. Who knows what gold is behind the curtain because Jobs wants it for an Apple release.
What has happened to TechCrunch? What’s happened to the Web 2.0 boom and the startup scene?
Up until about 4-5 montha ago, I enjoyed TechCrunch because most (maybe 80-90 percent) of the articles were about innovative new startups that had recently got funded.
Now, that has flipped completely, and 80 percent or more of the stories are about Twitter, Google, Facebook, Micosoft/Yahoo and the iPhone.
Running like 16 different stories about the Twitter/Summize deal in the space of a week is OVERKILL, guys!
I smell something nefarious here. Has the bad economy crushed Web 2.0? Has the bubble at last officially burst? And why isn’t TechCrunch coming out and reporting it, rather than loading the site with all this filler?
All these pieces about every conceivable angle of one Twitter deal, and every imaginable statistic about the iPhone does not bode well for what’s really happening in the saptartup scene..
It’s a distraction…
I like apps under 99 cents, if apps price more than $9.99. i will not care. I just buy some games under 99 cents,
good move apple!
@mobinews my twits mobile news
Awww..this is bad news to those financially deprived persons out there who have iPhone (just like me). I guess this will be the start of saving money to get the latest. *sigh*
Wow, I am totally shocked. I had no idea.
JT
http://www.Ulti...e-Anonymity.com
Story coming up next week: “Free Apps Retake the Lead”… wait… make that “Free Apps Retake the Lead in iPhone App Store”. You wouldn’t want to forget the all important “iPhone” in the tittle. More ads dollar.
The $70 app, ForeFlight, is meant for pilots. All pilots, too, not just airline pilots. It’s worth the price because comparable software on other platforms costs in excess of $100 and sometimes up towards $300; additionally, they all charge subscription fees. While the information and utilities the app (and other comparable software) offers are mostly available for free, they’re all over the place. On top of that, things like airport directories and departure/approach diagrams take up a ton of space. It’s extremely beneficial to have this information in one place, on the fly, as a matter of safety and efficiency. In the scheme of things, $70 is nothing for a utility like this.
most of the $0.99 cent apps are those books you can buy to read. any sort of educated analysis would disclude those apps, because they aren’t really apps. free is and always will be king, not $0.99.
sorry meant to say more meaningful analysis, definitely see what greg was trying to do, which is look at the initial app pricing data at a high level
In some ways, I wish that all the Apps had a minimum price of $0.99. For various reasons this will never happen. But this is my reasoning. There have been numerous studies that show that the call of “free” overwhelms us. When placed side by side, we would rather eat free food that we can barely tolerate rather than spend a minimal amount to upgrade to food that we would really enjoy. Likewise, if all the Apps had some price we would do a rational analysis and seek to get the best value for our investment. But so long as there is a “free” option, we’ll find it difficult to justify even a measly $0.99 investment.
Free apps for iphone and ipod http://theiphon...g.blogspot.com/
I found a very interesting and detailed article:
The Missing Guide to the iPhone 3G Price. (What Apple Forgot to Tell Us).
You should check it out!
I think its absolutley hilarous how smart you fuckin losers actually think you are…..ITS A FUCKING CELL PHONE….CALM THE FUCK DOWN. you guys are fucking pathetic…and yes i own an iphone and no im not like all of you…im not a vigin and i know how outside feels. GET A FUCKING LIFE…MIGHT DO YOU SOME GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!
Does anyone have updated stats on this topic – something from any time in 2009?