The daily battle of Free vs. Paid Apps

London/Berlin, 7. November 2011: Free or Paid? News is usually the most cost-neutral, even in the UK, with a major portion available free of charge! A recent comparison “Free vs. Paid Apps” by madvertise (www.madvertise.com) and AppZapp, the app-bargain-guide (http://www.AppZapp.net/EN), speaks a clear language:

310 iPad applications in this range are paid, with almost six times as many (in figures: 1,757) 85% are available free of cost!

Discussions have been lead for many years not only within the publisher community in UK. It is also a question of the best business model. And the results for the iPhone show almost the same: News are a daily pleasure free of charge! The News category for the iPhone offers significantly more applications at no cost: an iPhone user can download more than 70% of the applications for free. But to counterbalance the 7,148 free apps there are 2,755 chargeable ones.

But what would we do without our mobile apps? In many situations there is always a suitable app to aid consumers, whatever we need, whether we need to organise a few things, navigation aid like the app navfree to find our way through the concrete jungle of London or simply access basic information like TV highlights of the day. Life without our daily companions either the iPhone or the iPad is unthinkable.

Entertainment and Games apps are usually charged

It is a different picture with the Entertainment category: 65% of the apps (2,479) for the iPad are paid, 35% (1,343) are free of charge. On the iPhone 60% (25,357) are paid and 40% (17,221) are for free.

Most of the applications are usually developed in the category of Games: there are 8,408 Games apps available for the iPad. One has to pay for close to 70% of them, which is about 5,864 Games. The iPad Books is the second largest category. In contrast to the Games category, here providers often demand a fee. Only 1,389 of the 5,926 iPad Books are available free of cost whereas 81% of all Books are charged.

Also in the case of the iPhone the Games category is the largest one: there are a total of 57,215 Games available in the UK. 22,615 of these are free to download, which is about two-fifths (39.5%). On the other hand, the user must pay for nearly 60% of the Games.

The European mobile ad network madvertise – with worldwide 1.4 billion monthly page impressions – conducted in collaboration with AppZapp, the App-Bargain-Guide, a survey that provides you with deep insights into which categories are offering mostly free apps:

The current madreport for UK can be downloaded at the following link:

http://madvertise.com/en/insights-2/mad-report-2/

There is also a graphic to be downloaded at the following link:

http://madvertise.com/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=62

About madvertise

madvertise (www.madvertise.com) is one of the largest mobile advertising networks and a leading mobile advertising player in Europe with 1.4 billion monthly page impressions. By creating a fast and efficient connection between its partners, madvertise enables advertisers to target a select audience, while allowing developers and publishers to monetize their apps and mobile websites.

madvertise prides itself on its state-of-the-art mobile technology, as is reflected in its “made in Germany” products which offer the highest reliability and quality and which are continuously enhanced to maintain cutting edge performance. madvertise’s mobile ad server optimizes interactive mobile advertising media, such as mobile video or rich media ads.

The company was founded in 2008 by Carsten Frien, Pan Katsukis, Thomas Hille, Martin Karlsch and Team Europe (www.teameurope.net) and currently has over 50 employees with offices in Berlin, Hamburg, London, Barcelona, ​​Madrid and Milan.

Further information is available at www.madvertise.com, subscribe to our blog: www.madvertise.com/unternehmen/blog; follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/madvertise or become a friend on Facebook: www.facebook.com/madvertise

Media contact:

Christoph Burbes

Head of Communications

christoph.burbes [at] madvertise.com

+49 176 15 00 38 41

Nathalie d‘ Aboville

Communications

nathalie.d’aboville [at] madvertise.com

+49 176 15 00 38 37