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Mar. 23, 2010

On average, buying a game downloaded from Microsoft’s Windows Mobile app store costs about $2 more than downloading the same game from Apple's App Store. Does this come to you as a surprise?

With about 35 mobile applications stores available worldwide and many more expected to open this year, mobile appllication developers are wondering what operating platforms to write for since there are now so many that are available.

Most app stores have about 75 percent of their products that are sold, and the other 25 percent that are free.

But Google's Android might change that, as it counts for a little over half of all sellable apps.

Wireless users are downloading all kinds of different apps. Apple is all about games and entertainment. But almost 40 percent of BlackBerry downloads are for games only. Nokia’s Ovi store users are all about personalization, with ringtones and wallpapers.

Remco van den Elzen is co-founder of Ovi, which has been tracking mobile applications in apps stories since April of last year. Apple enjoys the lion share of the app store market with more than 170,000 apps available last month alone.

However, Google is certainly gaining momentun as well, counting about 27,140 apps available on its site, while Research In Motion, with its BlackBerry OS, and Nokia, with its Ovi store, account for between 6,000 and 8,000 apps, respectively.

In contrast to this, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform and Palm’s WebOS platform have about 2,000 apps each.

Today, mobile app developers can make money from their offerings, but developers shouldn’t necessarily aim for mass-market use, van den Elzen said.

Most apps from Apple, Ovi and Palm cost about $3 each, but BlackBerry and Win-Mobile apps average about double the cost.

And if you think paying an extra $2 for Tetris is expensive, consider IM+for Skype. On Apple, the app is $5, on Windows Mobile it is $30, van den Elzen said.

The top apps in the App Store cost between $1 and $2. But the top-grossing apps cost about $10.

Overall, about 1,615 developers have apps on multiple platforms today, van den Elzen said. But the price differentiator will level out going forward, he added.

Business apps are the most expensive, entertainment apps are in the middle and social-networking apps are the least expensive.

Nothing new there, as business apps are always more expensive no matter what medium is being offered to promote and sell them to companies that need them.

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Source: Vegas CTIA Wireless 2010.