Shopping for a location-based application for your smartphone? The BlackBerry
App World store has the most expensive and least varied offerings, Apple's
iTunes App Store offers the most variety for the iPhone at substantially lower
prices than Research In Motion's BlackBerry store, and Google's Android Market
features the least expensive paid applications, according to a report issued
May 20 by Skyhook Wireless.
In what Skyhook promises will be a monthly report on application store trends,
the hybrid location-based services company found that the average price of a
location-aware application through RIM's BlackBerry App World is $13.60,
compared with $3.60 from the iTunes App Store and $0.84 from the Android Market.
Skyhook also found Apple's App Store has the greatest number of location-based
applications—more than 2,300—and the highest percentage of paid LBS apps, at
over 75 per cent. Over at the BlackBerry store, 67 per cent of LBS apps are
paid, while 80 percent of Android Market applications are free.
After standardizing application types across all three stores, Skyhook found 17
different types of application that use location-based services. The most
popular LBS application categories are travel, navigation and social networking,
but new types such as music, finance and game applications are also integrating
location in new ways.
"Skyhook's comparative study of location-aware app stores reveals three
very different types of stores in key measurements like the average cost of
apps, total number of apps and growth over time," Kate Imbach, director of
marketing and developer programs for Skyhook Wireless, said in a statement.
Among Skyhook's key findings:
Apple App Store: Offers more than 35,000 applications in the United
States with more than 2,300 LBS applications.
There is about a 75-25 split between paid and free LBS applications. The store
has the greatest number of LBS applications with the widest variety.
BlackBerry App World: Launched in April, BlackBerry App World offers 57
LBS applications with the smallest variety of applications. The number of
BlackBerry LBS applications has not increased significantly since the store
opened.
Android Market: Currently offers more than 3,000 applications (excluding
games) with approximately 300 LBS applications, but features the greatest
number of free LBS applications. While 805 LBS applications were released for
the iPhone in the first six months of the Apple App Store's launch, only 193 Android
LBS application have been released.
"We expect to see a growing variety of LBS apps in all stores, and we will
monitor changes in prices closely to see if BlackBerry app prices come more in
line with the other, less expensive stores," the Skyhook report stated.
"It will be interesting to see if Android can establish a market for paid
apps, or if the Google checkout system continues to hinder paid apps."
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