Now that in-app purchasing for free apps has been live for a few weeks in the iTunes App Store, and Apple is now ranking the top-grossing apps, whether they start out as free or paid, we have some initial data on what kinds of apps are pulling in the most money from in-app purchases. (In-app purchases allow apps to offer a free version and then make money by requiring consumers to pay for additional features or content). Today, Distimo put out a report (download it here) which breaks down the top 40 grossing in-app purchasing titles by category (see chart below). Games, social networking, and book apps are doing the best job upselling consumers from free apps to paid enhancements. Music, news, and finance apps, not so much.
Games top the rankings of these best performing apps, with ngmoco’s Eliminate Pro (iTunes link) currently the No. 8 top-grossing app, validating ngmoco’s shift from a paid to freemium model. Mafia Wars (iTunes link) is another example. Seven of the top 40 grossing apps with in-app purchasing are games.
After games, social networking apps such as iRose (iTunes link), TweetPush (iTunes link), and Boxcar (iTunes link) are doing the best job convincing users to pay up after they download the free versions. Social networking apps take six of the top 40. Then comes books, with four of the top 40, including Comics (iTunes link)
It seems that apps which are addictive (like games) persistent (like social communications apps), or lengthy and easy to sample (like books) are doing the best with in-app purchases. It trickles down after that. There is one music app in the top performing apps—RJDJ (iTunes link), one news app, one finance app, and so on. People just don’t want to pay for songs, news, or stock quotes.
The Distimo report also compares the average price for the top 100 mobile apps in the iTunes App Store, the Android Market and the Blackberry App World. The Average price of an app in iTunes is the cheapest at $3.42, followed by Android at $4.30, and Blackberry Apps at $5.61. With more than 10 times as many apps as any of the other app stores, all that competition and proliferation of $0.99 apps probably explains why iTunes apps are the cheapest, even among the top 100. Also, Blackberry apps all have a minimum price of $2.99. Research in Motion just announced that developers will be able to include in-app transactions next year. It doesn’t appear that there is any official way to include in-app transactions in Android apps yet.
And the music industry’s last hope, mobile, is now dying. Will this be enough to get them to reconsider their business model?
Interesting comment about people not wanting to pay for news. Completely contradicts yesterdays Ruport Murdoch interview. Maybe he is a bit mistaken after all.
what social networking apps, offer in app purchases ? and what exactly are they selling ?
You need to correct the start of the article. In-app purchases have been available for a while now. In-app purchase in FREE apps has only been available for a few weeks.
Paid news is more complex than you give credit. In the Paid category, CNN is the only established news publisher that even offers a paid app – and it’s in the top grossing list. All the other major news outlets’ apps are either free, in free-trial stage, or in Discovery’s case, released yesterday, so it’s premature to say that people won’t pay for news. You could just as legitimately conclude that 100% of the Paid News apps from major publishers are in the top performing segment.
This report is way too early. Only the early adopters who were quick on their feet or already had IAP working are on the app store now. A huge wave of apps that newly feature IAP as their business model for free apps are coming soon, and that wave will be a more accurate gauge of things to come.
Good news for the mobile programmers!
Those stats were very much expected. Isn’t it? So developers you know what apps to make and you shoudn’t. right?