Breaking down price sensitivity and the Top Paid v. Top Grossing charts

The iTunes application market is incredibly price sensitive.

We saw it ten days ago when Electronic Arts had a weekend 50% off sale.  During the period of savings, all EA applications significant boosts on the market.  Prior to the decrease, there were only two EA applications on the Top 20 (Paid iPad) list.  Overnight, this number jumped to six.  The iPhone numbers were similar.

All things considered, I would guess that this sale had a net positive effect on EA’s revenues for the period.  Once prices increased, all EA iPad applications gradually dropped out of the paid top 20.

EA’s rather expensive game, Scrabble for the iPad ($9.99) is also it’s most popular with a 30 day average ranking of 17*.

 

<< Update:  2010-11-23, EA has just launched a Thanksgiving special and cut prices again.  Scrabble is now 4th on the Top Paid list, and 3rd on the Top Grossing list.  >>

 

 

Top Paid iPad Pricing      Top Grossing iPad Pricing
0.99         15%         Freemium  24%
1.99         21%          0.99      4%
2.99         18%          1.99      9%
3.99         5%               2.99      9%
4.99         20%          3.99      3%
5.99        0%             4.99      14%
6.99         3%               5.99      0%
7.99         4%               6.99      3%
9.99         8%               7.99      4%
12.99       1%             9.99      13%
14.99       1%             12.99 2%
15.99        1%               13.99 1%
16.99        1%               14.99 2%
19.99        1%               15.99 1%
29.99        1%             16.99 1%
                  19.99 3%
                  29.99 1%
                  39.99 2%
                  49.99  1%
                  189.99    1%
                  399.99    2%

 

It’s interesting to note that 54% of the highest grossing iPad applications are either freemium or expensive ($9.99 or more).

At 99 cents, only four applications made the list with the highest rank being 48.  $1.99 sees 9 applications on the list with 4 in the top 20.

 

** The numbers sourced within this post were current as of 2010-11-22 and from analysis of the US charts.

 

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