Statistics: Pricing in the Mac App Store

This post is about the pricing in the Mac App Store and it answers several very important questions:

1. What is the average price of an app in the Mac App Store?
2. How does the development of the average prices look like?
3. Which categories contain the highest/lowest priced apps?

Before I go into the details I would like to explain how I created the statistics I am about to share with you. I am the developer of Store News. Store News is a simple app that shows the best deals in the Mac App Store. The best deals are determined by observing the price of every application in the store and list it in Store News as soon its price drops. The observation results in a daily "snapshot" of the whole Mac App Store. I used these snapshot to create the following statistics.

I used the snapshots created between 13. January 2011 and 1. March 2011.

The following chart shows the development of the average price of an app. Initially the average price was $18.46 and it dropped to $14.92 which is a delta of -$3.54 (-19.17%).

 

As you can see the price dropped almost constantly. The average price of Apples own apps sold via the Mac App Store is $29.80 which is round about twice as much. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I can't tell since I don't know the number of sales. What do you think?

The next chart shows the average price broken down by category.

If you don't know how to price your app it can't hurt to look at the chart above. What surprised me is the "Developer Tools" category since I thought that it contains many "pro-like" apps that make money by selling an app at a high price and in low volume. The category "Education" also caught my eyes since the average price is about $20.00 and I always thought that students don't have a lot of money.

I will create new charts during the next two weeks that I will share with you via this blog.

Drops 1.1 — the ultimate tool for uploading files

I am very happy to announce the release of Drops 1.1. Drops is the ultimate tool for uploading files. Simply drop files or folders on the Drops icon in your menu bar. In a blink of an eye your files will be uploaded to your server and the URL copied to the clipboard. You can now simply paste the URL wherever you want. Drops can also automatically shorten the URL for you. Let's have a closer look.

This is Drop's menu. It shows a history of uploaded files. The icon can change its color so that you can see what Drops is doing at the moment.

There are many things about Drops that will make your life easier.

• Manage multiple FTP servers: Simply create as many connections you need.
• Drops can copy the URL of an uploaded file to the clipboard automatically.
• Drops can shorten the URL automatically.
• Drops can compress files before uploading.
• Drops can compress folders before uploading.

You can buy Drops at the Mac App Store - more information and a link to the store can be found at my website.