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

23 Nov 2010

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.

 

• Ranking as of 2010-11-22:  21st

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

 

Follow @appiity on Twitter for more application market insights.

The State of Freemium on the iTunes App Store

21 Nov 2010

Currently,  24 of the top 100 grossing applications on the Canadian iPad chart are *freemium *(supported by in-app purchases).

There is a fairly even distribution throughout the rankings, but it is interesting to note that the free application *Smurfs Village *is currently #1 and has been for the past 4 days.

Fluctuation is actually quite high amongst freemium iPad applications and most lack staying power.  It would be interesting to hear from the vendors if actual revenues fluctuate as much as the charts seem to indicate.

It’s a different story with the iPhone.  29 of the top 100 grossing applications are freemium but nearly all of them have significant staying power.

For example, World War has steadily risen from #70 to #7 over the past 25 days, without any content updates.  An application like Shazam is even more consistent, holding it’s top 20 spot for the past month.

Is the rise of freemium a new phenomenon?

Yes, it is.

Looking back three months to August and there were just 9 **iPad and 4** iPhone applications in the top 100.  None are currently on the chart today, and less than 50% have shown any activity over the past 30 days.

 

 

*** **These are numbers from the Canadian Top 100 Grossing charts.  Leave a comment if you’d like to see the numbers for the US/UK.

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Being Steve Jobs Boss

21 Oct 2010

Great article about Steve Jobs and John Sculley.

Business Week

The article mentions (a number of times) Jobs’ obsession of starting with the point of user interaction and working backwards.

Strong agreement from me there.

The idea of Sony wanting to dominate electronic components before moving forward to products is analogous to building the backend without any thought of what the UI and user experience is going to be.