Mobile application store data shows interesting results

Apple pushed everyone to kick it into gear and get their on-device mobile application stores up and running and now we see there are stores on every smartphone platform. ReadWriteWeb put together an article on mobile application stores that shows the Android Market may be the most free-friendly store available, which was a surprising finding to me since the iPhone App Store is so huge. Then again, let's not confuse percentage of free with the number of free apps. According to the table they show in their report, 57% of applications in the Android Market are free while 25% are free in the App Store. Palm is actually second in percentage (not number) of free apps with 32%.

The results for the average price for apps was also interesting with RIM clearly leading all others in average price at $8.26 with Windows Mobile in second at $6.99. Palm has the lowest average price at $2.53 with Apple, Android, and Nokia apps in the mid-$3 range.

The Android Market is also now the 2nd largest application store with a reported 19,297 apps compared to Apple's 150,998 apps. Nokia's Ovi Store is 3rd with 6,118 apps. Windows Mobile is way down at the bottom with 693 apps in the store. The thing with Android, BlackBerry, Nokia, and Windows Mobile is that you can find and install applications outside of the official stores (Handango, Handmark, GetJar, etc.) too so the numbers for all of these are actually higher in reality than reported just in the official store data.