Since I was asked a couple of times today what types of applications are generally free and what types of applications are generally charged for, I decided to put together some quick stats, based on data collected from the AppStore this morning:
The results are somewhat obvious - news and social networking are disproportionately free, since a) it’s difficult to charge for content that’s freely available elsewhere and b) social networks grow in value with the number of participants. Entertainment and games are disproportionately paid, reflecting a belief (correctly, I think) that people will pay money to have fun. Since the AppStore’s applications are disproportionately entertainment and games (helped along by a lot of $0.99 e-books), the AppStore’s applications are predominantly paid. The most common price for an application in the ‘games’ category is still $9.99, although the second-most common price is $1.99.
It’s hard to draw generalizations about the other categories, in the middle - the number of applications per category is still pretty small - but I suspect that applications that rely on user-generated content are disproportionately free, and those that rely on developer-and-designer-provided content disproportionately cost money.