It is our pleasure to release our latest Distimo Report.

This report covers the Apple App Store for iPad and iPhone (with specific focus on in-app purchases), as well as BlackBerry App World (Worldwide), Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile for June 2010 in the United States. The major findings are:

• The percentage of applications with in-app purchases is significantly higher in the Apple App Store for iPad (10%) than in the Apple App Store for iPhone (2%). The Games and Social Networking categories in both stores have the highest proportion of applications with in-app purchases available.
• The most successful free applications that monetized using in-app purchases this month in the Apple App Store for iPhone are MobiTV (MobiTV), ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup (ESPN) and Tap Fish (BayView Labs).
• The most successful paid applications that monetized using in-app purchases this month in the Apple App Store for iPhone are Guitar Hero (Activision Publishing, Inc.), TomTom U.S.A. (TomTom International BV) and Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies II (Activision Publishing, Inc.).
• Mirroring the Distimo report covering May 2010, Pages and iBooks, published by Apple Inc, are again the number one paid and free applications on the Apple App Store for iPad, respectively.
• Three out of the ten most popular applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone were published by Electronic Arts.
• Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad entered the top 10 highest ranked paid applications chart in the 6th position. It was the
  top grossing application in the Apple App Store for iPad after Pages by Apple Inc.
• Nine out of the ten most popular paid applications on the Apple App Store for iPhone are Games, however only two out of the ten most popular free applications are Games. In the Nokia Ovi Store, seven out of ten of the most popular paid applications are Games, while only three out of ten of the most popular free applications are Games.

You can download the report for free here.

This report covers the Apple App Store for iPad, the Apple App Store for iPhone, BlackBerry App World (Worldwide), Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile for May 2010 in the United States. The major findings are:

• More than 50% of applications are priced below or equal to $2.00 in all stores, with the exception of BlackBerry App World and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.
• The average price of all paid applications and the 100 most popular paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPad ($4.65) is higher than in the Apple App Store for iPhone ($4.01). However, the average price of the 100 top grossing applications is higher on the Apple App Store for iPhone.
• Google Android Market has the largest share of free applications (57%) and Windows Marketplace for Mobile has the smallest (22%).
• Twitter, Inc. published their native application in the Apple App Store and Google Android Market, becoming the monthly number 10 free application in the Apple App Store for iPhone, and the number 6 free application in Google Android Market.
• Nine out of the ten most popular free applications and eight out of ten most popular paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone are games.
• In the competitive e-reader market, both the iBooks application by Apple, Inc., and the Kindle application by Amazon.com are ranked among the 10 most popular free applications in the Apple App Store for iPad. Apple’s application is ranked number one however, and Amazon’s application is ranked number ten.
• Five out of the ten most popular free applications in Windows Marketplace for Mobile are published by Microsoft Corporation.

You can download the report for free here.

This report covers the Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile for April 2010, with additional focus on iPhone applications in the Apple App Store during the period November 2009 – April 2010. The major findings are:

• In the Apple App Store, paid applications in the Top Overall, Games, Business and Entertainment categories stay in these categories for 27, 39, 59 and 38 days on average, respectively. Free applications stay in the Top 100 for a significantly shorter time in the Top Overall, Games and Business categories, with 19, 21 and 39 days on average, respectively. In contrast to these categories, free applications in the Entertainment category stay in the Top 100 for a slightly longer period of time than paid applications; 43 days compared to 38 days.
• In the Apple App Store, the majority of paid applications that have been in the Top 100 Overall during the entire period of November 2009 – April 2010 fall into the Games and Entertainment categories. The paid applications that have been in the Top 5 for the longest period of time are Doodle Jump (140 days), RedLaser (73 days) and Skee-Ball (68 days). The paid application that has been number one for the longest period of time is Skee-Ball (24 days). The free applications that have been in the Top 5 for the longest period of time are Facebook (12 days) and Paper Toss (7 days).
• The majority of the 10 highest ranked paid applications were published in the following categories in April 2010: Productivity (Apple App Store for iPad), Games (Apple App Store for iPhone), Themes (BlackBerry App World), News & Weather (Google Android Market), Games (Nokia Ovi Store), Productivity & Utilities (Palm App Catalog) and in Games (Windows Marketplace for Mobile).
• The majority of the 10 highest ranked free applications were published in the following categories in April 2010: Games and Entertainment (Apple App Store for iPad), Games (Apple App Store for iPhone), Music & Audio/IM & Social Networking/Themes (BlackBerry App World), Tools and Social (Google Android Market), Games and Entertainment (Nokia Ovi Store), Games (Palm App Catalog) and Social Networks/News & Weather (Windows Marketplace for Mobile).
• In April 2010, the highest ranked paid iPad application in the Apple App Store was Pages, followed by GoodReader for iPad, and Pinball HD. The highest ranked free iPad application in the Apple App Store was iBooks, followed by The Solitaire and Break HD Free.

You can download the report for free here.

Previously, the Palm App Catalog was only accessible from the Palm Pre and Pixi. Now however, a part of the Catalog is also accessible from the web, right here. It is a feature page, introducing people to the kind of apps that are available on the Catalog.

The website is purely a showcase of apps, it is not possible to download or purchase applications from the site. About 1/3rd of the apps on this page are Games, with a total of 85 apps being shown.

The Palm App Catalog is gaining significance: last weekend, 40 apps were added, and about a month ago they released its new version of the Catalog with support for paid apps (examples here). Additionally, more and more countries are supported, increasing the amount of consumers being able to access the Catalog.

A few days later than announced, Palm just released the new version of its WebOS. One of the new features is support for paid applications in the Palm App Catalog. At this moment, no paid apps are available, and it is a bit unclear when Palm will publish these apps:

In preparation for e-commerce in the App Catalog, to purchase apps, you can enter credit card information by selecting Preferences & Accounts from the application menu in App Catalog. Credit card information is stored with the Palm profile, not on the phone. You can choose whether you need to enter their Palm profile password each time you make a purchase, or for the first purchase in any four-hour window.

Consumers will be able to pay using Credit Card and developers receive a 70% revenue share. In the beta period only a selection of developers will be able to sell applications in the App Catalog. When support for paid applications goes out of beta, developers need to pay a yearly fee of $99 to sell apps.

The Palm App Catalog was launched in beta in June and is now available for Palm users in the US and Canada. App Catalog will be coming to European countries soon, 13 October in Germany and on 16 October in the U.K. and Ireland.

The Palm App Catalog was launched in beta in June and is now available for Palm users in the US and Canada. It is expected that the App Catalog will be coming to European countries at the end of October.

Since the App Catalog launch, only free applications have been available, and the content is limited to just over 60 apps.

In August, Palm announced they would start beta testing paid applications in September, which was just confirmed for September 24 (via AllThingsD).

Consumers will be able to pay using Credit Card and developers receive a 70% revenue share. It is not clear yet how long the beta will last. In the beta period only a selection of developers will be able to sell applications in the App Catalog. When support for paid applications goes out of beta, developers need to pay a yearly fee of $99 to sell apps.

On time as announced earlier, the Palm App Catalog is now available in the first country following the US. As of today, the Palm Pre is on sale with Bell in Canada.

Palm is continuing it’s worldwide App Catalog roll-out in October, when the Pre comes to Europe. Right now a small selection of free apps is available, but Palm will be testing paid applications in beta starting mid-September and will give developers access to the store this fall.

The Palm App Catalog was launched in beta at the beginning of June, together with the first supported phone coming to the market, the Pre. Until now, both the Palm Pre and App Catalog are only available in the US. Palm announced that both will be coming to Canada onAugust 27. After Canada, the App Catalog will also be launched in Europe this October. Right now, there are 31 applications available in the App Catalog, all free.

Today, Palm announced support for paid applications in the App Catalog. Developers can submit their applications for beta testing starting mid-September. It is not clear yet when paid applications will be offered to the full audience of the store.

The most important facts for paid apps:

• Developers can charge a one-time fee
• Initially only supported in the US
• Developers receive 70% revenue share
• Billing for consumers will be done via credit card

We updated this information in our mobile app store overview.

Below the number of sold smartphones per manufacturer are displayed:

Source: Gartner

Apple shows the largest growth with the release of the iPhone 3GS, with a market share of 13% of all worldwide smartphone sales in Q2. In total, 41 million smartphones were sold in Q2, but how many of their buyers have access to an app store on their phone?

If we look at the specific manufacturers:

• Nokia: the Ovi Store supports nearly all Nokia smartphones, but is only pre-installed on the N97, with newer models to follow. The N97 was sold 500k times. So while the store is available for the main part of their 18 million customers, it is challenging to predict which part actually downloaded the Ovi Store on their phone, besides the 500k N97 customers.
• Research in Motion: Blackberry App World supports the new models that were sold the last quarter. But like Nokia, it is not pre-installed on the devices yet. Next, App World has just been rolled out in Europe, so the reach of the store during Q2 was limited to US, UK and Canada.
• Apple: the Apple App Store is present on all in Q2 sold iPhones.
• HTC: 3 out of 25 HTC models are Android based and have Android Market pre-installed. In Q2, HTC was the only major manufacturer with Android phones. Gartner says Android has 2% of smartphone OS share, which translates to 800k phones. The other HTC models are Windows Mobile based, with Windows Marketplace not launched yet.
• Fujitsu: has no app store yet.
• Others: the only included manufacturer with an app store is Palm. According Gartner, 200k Palm Pre’s were sold, on which the Palm App Catalog is pre-installed.

Adding the total number of consumers that have access to an app store on the device: 500k (Nokia N97) + 5.4M (Apple) + 800k (HTC) + 200k (Palm) = 6.9M. This number is worst-case, because consumers with a Blackberry or Nokia smartphone that manually installed their app store are excluded.

With smartphones quickly gaining market share, it will be very interesting to see how the total number of app store supported phones will develop.