Pay and Free Apps...Apples and Googles

An Internet company called Pingdom <http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/08/27/the-mobile-app-divide-free-rules-on-android-paid-rules-on-iphone/> has conducted a fascinating survey of the App Store and the Android Market. Their findings showed dramatic differences between the two. 70% of the apps in the Apple Store are paid apps, but only 35% of the Android apps are paid. They speculate on several reasons why this might be the case:

• The App Store has been in existence longer and it's a more established platform for serious developers looking to make money.
• More Google developers are hobbyists, at this point.
• The App Store supports paid apps in most countries, while the Android market only has paid apps in 9 countries.

One thing for sure is that the gap in number of apps in the Android Market is shrinking.