Skyhook's report also highlights the differences in how app developers price their apps in different stores. Wikango, for example, is free for iPhone users, while the Android app costs $14.73 and the BlackBerry app is $19.99. Even though the iPhone platform has a reputation for driving the price of apps down, about 75% of all location-aware apps in the App Store are paid apps. On the BlackBerry platform, half of the apps are paid apps while less than 20% of the location apps on Android are paid apps.

It's interesting to see that such a small number of apps are currently available across the major platforms. Chances are, though, that a lot of these apps come from smaller development shops that simply don't have the resources to port their apps to every platform. As the market for location-aware apps matures, we will surely see that a lot of the more successful players will offer cross-platforms apps. Until then, the iPhone is the natural proving ground for these apps, especially given that it has the largest developer and user community at this point.

As we noted earlier this month, the average price for iPhone apps continues to fall, but the average price for the most popular iPhone apps is around $2.43 in the U.S. - which - judging from Mplayit's data - indicates that most users would like to pay less than $2 for their apps, but are more than willing to pay extra for the best and most popular apps.

Bonus: Percentage of Games in the Top App Stores

No matter the exact numbers, though, the sheer size of the App Store today poses numerous challenges for both Apple and its users. An app store of this size must hide hundreds of great apps, for example, that simply go undiscovered. With more than 15,000 new apps per month for iPhone and iPad, app discovery is a major problem that nobody has really solved yet.

App Pricing

The Distimo team also took a closer look at how developers are pricing their apps. Since the launch of the iPad, apps for Apple's tablet computer were always more expensive than iPhone apps and this trend continues. The average iPad app now costs almost $5, while the average iPhone app is about $1 cheaper ($4.03). This trend is even more pronounced in the top 100, where iPad apps cost an average of $5.80 and iPhone apps come in at just $2.14. Distimo argues that iPad owners are willing to pay far more for their apps than iPhone owners, yet developers are not yet pricing their apps accordingly.

The iPhone app environment is absurdly overcrowded and hard to navigate - AppsFire is one of my favorite solutions to that problem. The service lets you email links to apps you want to share on your phone. It's simple but so useful! A contest to start the hype for apps before they get buried in the app store is smart.

We'll get to learn about great apps and the app makers will get a small amount of cash and a large amount of publicity. You can register to participate at the page for the AppStar Contest.

While Apple uses games from Electronic Arts and the I Am T-Pain app as examples of highly popular applications, these apps also profited from instant name recognition and a built-in fan base. For other apps, getting discovered in the Apps Store is getting increasingly hard as the competition heats up. Besides bringing a rather lackluster version of the genius feature to the App Store, Apple also hasn't made any significant improvements to the app discovery experience in iTunes and the mobile store.

The game itself is pretty straightforward. New players get $1,000 in virtual currency and a few missions (invest in 5 apps to begin with, for example) to get started. From within the app, you can browse the Apple app store and see app descriptions and screenshots. Sadly, though, you can't see user comments here. To see these - and to download apps - Angel's Choice takes you to the official app store.

Overall, this is a fun way to find new apps, though to some degree the game mechanics can actually take over as the app discovery functions move into the background. We don't think that this app is the one and only solution to the app discovery problem - after all, the app just creates something akin to a new top 10 list - but if used right, it can be a fun way to find new apps.

As someone who's recently made the switch from iPhone to Android, I can attest that finding apps in the Android Market is not easy. "Currently, discovering apps from the over 100,000 apps available in the Android Market is limited to keyword-based search features," says StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp. "With StumbleUpon App Discovery, users can now find applications that are personally recommended to them and in many cases would previously have gone unnoticed."

The problem here is that brands often approach app development without even considering their customers' needs. Most users, for example, are not interested in apps that are just marketing vehicles for a brand and will leave negative reviews when they encounter such an app. Given the nature of mobile app usage, customers expect to get some value out of the app that is related to the brand and its products.

As Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI's co-founder and president, told us yesterday, a lot of companies still think of apps as "microsites" and don't consider that mobile apps have to offer more than just great visuals and good copy. That doesn't mean that users don't want good design, too, though. The majority of respondents (57%) noted that apps should be well designed and 74% said that they want apps to be easy to use (leaving us to wonder if there are users out there who want apps that are badly designed and hard to use...). Even more importantly, though, 73% of those surveyed by Harris Interactive think that mobile apps should be easier to use than the brand's website.

Sadly, the researchers did not ask those who didn't download apps why they weren't interested in them. Kristen Purcell, the associate director for research at the Pew Internet Project, speculates that "it is clear that this is the early stage of adoption when many cell owners do not know what their phone can do. The apps market seems somewhat ahead of a majority of adult cell phone users."

App Amnesia: People Don't Know How Many Apps They Have

Among those adults who have used apps, half have actually paid for for them and they typically have around 10 on their phones, though there is clearly a group of very heavy apps users out there as well. Interestingly, most cell phone users - and especially those over 50 - don't actually know how many apps they have.

Only about 60% of all app users actually organize their apps so that their favorites are easily accessible. While Apple's new folders in the iOS 4 are a nifty feature for heavy users - there is clearly also a large market of users who only use a small number of apps and see no need to actually organize them in tidy little folders.

Most Popular Apps

Games are the most popular apps among adults (60%), closely followed by news and weather (52%), navigation (51%) and social networking apps 47%).

For more details, you can find the full report here.

CEO Bill Stone stated that:

"Handango is now offering developers the opportunity to sell the paid apps they create for the Android platform as well as offer any free apps when the first Android device launches. Customers can purchase apps via the Web and then download them to their device."

Handango will provide this golden opportunity to developers looking to profit from their apps on October 22, the anticipated launch date of the G1. Developers will be given several options for selling their app:

• Sell an app for a one-time purchase fee
• Sell an app for a monthly, quarterly or annual subscription fee

The plus side for Google and Handango is that App Store developers don't receive this many options to sell their apps. It could tempt a nice portion of developers to port their apps over to Android if the G1's launch is successful enough.

How Long Will it Last?

A small selection of apps have already been announced for Handango's catalog including Monopoly, The Weather Channel, Voice on the Go, EzQuote, and FitSync. Unfortunately, Google already has plans to allow developers to charge users to download an app. What will happen to Handango? If developers are smart, they'll offer their apps in both marketplaces if possible. Unless Google takes too long to implement the same payment options, Handango may have a little trouble in the future catering to developers trying to sell their apps.

AdMob will allocate ad impressions based on the quantity and quality of the inventory that each member contributes.

Given that developers have relatively few outlets to promote their applications outside of Apple's App Store, this looks like a good way for developers to get the word about their applications out to users. Given that the ads appear in other apps, the targeted users are obviously already interested in downloading iPhone apps.

"The combined revenues from apps funded by pay-per-download (PPD), value-added services (VAS, including freemium and subscription) and advertising is expected to rise from just under $10 billion in 2009 to $32 billion in 2015."

An additional issue is the relatively constrained area where smart phones are used with any frequency - industrialized countries. Even there, they are not as common as feature phones. Either smart phone use will need to grow or apps will need to adapt to feature phones as well.

Photo by Cristiano Betta

In talking with one mobile developer recently, we spoke of all the platforms their app was available on, but one was missing - RIM. BlackBerry, they explained, was simply a pain to develop for.

Today, the company behind the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and new QNX-based BlackBerry smartphones confirmed that it would support Google Android apps on these devices moving forward.

It's a much-repeated mantra of the mobile space that the apps make the platform and RIM just opened up the floodgates for apps on its devices. As Digital Daily's John Paczkowski points out, "PlayBook isn't launching with 100 apps. It's launching with well over 200,000."

According to the company's press release, the PlayBook will support both Java and Android apps using "app players," which provide an "application run-time environment." The apps will then run inside of these app players, which is little in the way of hindrance to gain access to thousands more apps than would otherwise be available.

The move is a risky, but bold, move by a company that has been steadily losing ground. At the same time, it could be the risky, but bold, move that saves it from going the way of the dodo.

Many thanks to Infacta for the use of their upcoming product (currently in private beta) Poll Daddy. I'm basically testing it out here for the first time publicly!