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Aug. 7, 2009

A recent research brief suggests that Google’s Android Marketplace and Apple’s App Store are employing similar pricing strategy, but that the Android Marketplace has a much higher price on average for reference applications, according to Distimo, a mobile app store analytics firm.

Furthermore, the survey found that while the average price in the most popular game category between the two stores is very similar, the price distribution isn't.

For instance, the number of 99-cent mobile applications in this category at the Apple App store far outweigh the number at Google's Android Marketplace, and that has some wireless industry observers perplexed.

Both app stores saw a recent increase in the average price toward the end of July as Mobile Navigator released Android and Apple versions of its relatively pricey navigation applications.

On July 23, the company released Mobile-Navigator-Europe and North America on the App Store, for $139.99 and $69.99, respectively. Android received only the North American version of the application, which also ran at $69.99.

Distimo’s monthly report on application stores has covered only one store, but a press release from the company says its most recent publication marks a trend. Future reports will feature “cross store trends.”

The most popular games on the Android Marketplace went between 99 cents and $5.99, with most going for $2.99.

But while most popular games on the App Store went for 99 cents, the store also featured a higher-end set, which was priced between $6.99 and up to $9.99.

Many observers say that Apple’s App Store numbers are inflated due to a large number of generally useless applications. There's also been some reports in online media on the ousting of developer Khalid Shaikh, founder of Perfect Acumen, and the App Store’s third most prolific developer.

According to those reports, Shaikh had published some 900 applications to the App Store, all of which were removed upon the revocation of his license to develop for Apple’s store.

The applications, which saw an average price of $4.99, were simple aggregation apps that consolidated Internet content on subjects ranging from Michael Jackson to professional wrestling.

Recently, Apple also has received some criticism surrounding the App Store’s approval process, which is in sharp contrast to the more liberal approach over at Android.

The approval process at the Android Marketplace has been likened to YouTube, where pretty much anything goes so long as it doesn't contain malicious code, and blatantly offensive or harmful content.

Android has received praise for its growing catalog of applications and faithful following of developers.

Recent analyst estimates put the Android catalog at somewhere around 6,000 app products, a huge distance behind the Apple App Store, which currently boasts a staggering 65,120 applications and growing at a rate about three times as fast as Android.

However, some are predicting that Android now has the potential to grow a lot faster, due to the open source community's way of doing things.

For those that may have forgotten, Google's search engine runs on an estimate of about 40,000 Linux servers spread in more than 20 data centers located all over the world. Google initially was just a university research project developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Stanford University back in late 1997 / early 1998.

Google's whole corporate and scientific culture was and still is all about open source and the Linux community.

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Source: Distimo.