Cheap software in the Mac App Store

The latest Distimo report is out and it has some interesting facts and figures about Apple's Mac App Store. For example, the average selling price of the top 300 apps is $11.21, or as we say over here £6.91. That is a very low price and perhaps it has something to do with the success of the App Store. It's obviously easier to shift a lot of cheap software than expensive items and people are always on the lookout for a bargain.

This is great news for consumers and it would be fantastic if the App Store continued to supply low cost software, but is it such good news for developers? It's a bit of a gamble pricing a product very low in the hope that a sales high volume will compensate this.

You often see headlines and stories about the massive number of downloads that products get and the huge revenue that some companies earn, but the really interesting statistics are never revealed. I wonder whether a small number of people are making a lot of money and the vast majority are making very little. It's just a suspicion on mine.

There are 300,000 apps in the iOS app store (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), but how many can you find? Start iTunes and browse the store and you'll find a few hundred, perhaps a thousand a most, and these are apps of the week, top free/paid lists, highlighted ones and so on. There must be tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands that Apple never highlights on the few pages it dedicates to apps in the store and I'd like to know how many sales they get.