Mobile applications have become dime a dozen with over 1.7 million applications already been published for two major marketplaces. The stagnation of applications have become so huge that has made it imperative for developers to adhere to different strategies for generating revenue. This is evidence from the fact that there has been a steep decline in the number of paid application in the app store.
Mobile applications have become dime a dozen with over 1.7 million applications already been published for two major marketplaces. The stagnation of applications have become so huge that has made it imperative for developers to adhere to different strategies for generating revenue. This is evidence from the fact that there has been a steep decline in the number of paid application in the app store.
A recent report by Flurry gave vital insights as how to the dynamics of the mobile applications are changing. There were nearly 80 percent of the free applications in the app store between 2010 and 2012. But the figure has jumped to over 90 percent during 2013, which is a steep rise in the free application. Most of these applications have adopted the freemium model of revenue generation.
These applications are incorporating various model like advertisements, in-app purchases, or pushing a portion of their users to premium, paid version of a mobile app. This is vital shift as it not only provides large user base to the application, but also increases chances of revenue generation.
However there is no denying the fact that most of the users won't prefer to pay for the premium experience, which can be countered by in-app purchases as well as mobile advertising. What is important to understand is the fact that the same scenario is visible on android which has been known to be prone to freemium model. There are many surveys that have shown that android users prefer less to pay for an application than iOS users.
There has been a undying debate going in the developers sphere regarding the availability of free content. as the competition is heating up, developers are being forced to adopt more conventional ways of generating revenue. Google has been able to master this concept with its ad network being incorporated into a range of application by developers.
With iOS developers also adopting the same route, the trend of paid application is falling. It is being speculated that the decision of moving from paid model to freemium has been due to availability of data centric application. As the competition heats up, developers are being forced to prioritise end user requirements which is giving way to the freemium application.