Windows Phone 7 Apps are Cheapest of All

According to analytics firm Distimo’s latest report, prices for Windows Phone 7 applications are much lower than those for Microsoft’s previous mobile operating system, Windows Mobile – in fact, WP7 apps are the cheapest of all the major application stores, with an average price of $1.95. That’s more in line with the other app stores’ prices, says Distimo.

And when it comes to the most popular paid applications, WP7 is right on track here, too. 57% of the 100 most popular applications are below $2.00. In other stores, this is between 51% and 67%, except for Windows Mobile, where just 37% of the top 100 were priced under $2.00.

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To uncover this data, Distimo examined the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace during the month of November. The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace opened on October 21st, 2010 and grew to 2,674 apps by the month’s end. Current reports state that there are now 3,000 WP7 apps (as of late November), and more than 15,000 developers have registered with Microsoft to build applications for this platform.

While the average price of paid apps is the lowest ($1.95, as reported above), it appears that the app store with claim to the lowest average price among the top 100 paid applications isn’t WP7, but Apple. Among the top apps, WP7’s average price is $2.54. In other stores, the average is $3.05.

Another interesting side note when looking at this chart: the top paid applications on Android are priced higher than on iPhone. And if you exclude the outlier that is Windows Mobile, then Android actually has the second-highest average price for all its paid apps, combined.

When you look at the price distribution of paid applications, it’s easy to see how WP7 differs from the rest. It has more paid apps under $2.00 than anyone else, a decent showing in the $2.00-$4.00 range, a few in the $5.00-$9.99 range and none more over $9.99 at all.

In addition to application pricing, Distimo also examined app popularity. Here it found that the “Games” and “Tools” are the two categories on WP7 with the largest number of apps. This is a similar trend to WP7’s predecessor, Windows Mobile. However, there are other categories where WP7 has significantly more apps than Windows Mobile – “Business and Finance,” for example, has 78% more apps than Windows Mobile and “News & Weather” has 92% more apps.

“Games” is the most popular category of all on Windows Phone 7. 40% of the top 100 apps are games. Entertainment apps are second most popular (12%).

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