In a research note that will be music to the ears of Apple and iOS developers, Piper Jaffrey analyst, Gene Munster has said that iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch owners are buying more apps and paying more for them than they were a year ago.
Munster’s research, reported on Fortune, shows that the average iOS user buys 61% more apps and pays, on average, 14% more for them than they did a year ago. Together, those figures mean that the average spend per user has risen by 83%.
‘Smartphone users are showing an increasing appetite to use apps to add features to their phones, wrote Munster, ‘and iOS has the leading app ecosystem.’
The report comes on the heels of Apple’s announcement last week that 15 billion apps have now been downloaded from the iOS App Store.
The news that the average app price has increased will be particularly welcomed by developers, after it dropped 18% in 2010. The majority of the downloads from the Store, 82%, are of free apps, but the average price of the rest is $1.55 (97p).
Given that, according to 148Apps, 38% of the apps on the Store are free and that the average selling price is $2.22, Munster’s figures suggest that free apps are downloaded roughly twice as frequently as paid-for apps, and that cheaper apps are, unsurprisingly, downloaded more often than more expensive ones.
