According to a new report from app store analytics firm Distimo, the average price for the most popular iPhone apps worldwide dropped 15% between December 2009 and February 2010. The price for the most popular iPhone apps in Europe is higher than anywhere else in the world. While the average price for popular apps in North America is $2.43, European iPhone users pay an average of $3.86. Given the different pricing tiers, strategies and tastes across countries, it’s hard to fully explain these price differences, but it looks like iPhone users in North America are more price sensitive than users in other countries.
Turn-By-Turn Navigation Apps
No matter the country or continent, navigation apps always represent the most expensive app category. Here, too, Europe leads the charge. According to Distimo, this can be explained by the simple fact that almost all the popular navigation apps in Europe cover different regions (TomTom Western Europe, Eastern Europe, UK, etc.). This skews the average price compared to the U.S., where a number of $0.99 cent apps like MotionX GPS Drive and the MapQuest Navigator are very popular and where companies like Navigon have only recently started to sell regional versions of their navigation apps.
Some Caveats
We should note that we aren’t quite sure how and if Distimo adjusted its stats for currency fluctuations. In an email to VentureBeat, Distimo’s founder Vincent Hoogsteder also noted that turn-by-turn navigation apps “raised the average price in December, so that the current drop is more of a correction.”
Given all of these caveats, we have to take this data with a grain of salt, though its clear that the average price for the most popular apps in Apple’s app store continues to fall. For developers, the constant decline of the average price for an iPhone app must be somewhat unsettling. Even though prices have fallen since December, however, Distimo’s report also shows that prices have remained relatively stable since January.
