According to the Danish company Distimo, the forecast of analysts from Gartner, according to which free downloads in 2012 will account for “only” 89% of all installations, overestimates the user’s love for paid programs.
To prove this, Distimo analyzed the American market. It established the ratio between the number of downloads among the 300 most popular free apps and the 300 most popular paid apps.
As a result of the study, it turned out that the App Store for iPad has the lowest coefficient: for every downloaded paid version, there are 11 free ones. The Amazon Appstore also has a low multiplier – 12. A little more for the iPhone, in its App Store version, there are 15 free apps for one paid app.
It is clear that Google Play has the highest coefficient. According to Distimo, for every paid downloaded application there are about 82 downloaded free applications.
After checking the American market, Distimo decided to collect data on global downloads. As a result, it turned out that the USA has the lowest multipliers. The ratio of paid downloads to free downloads in countries like China and Saudi Arabia is 1 to 100 or more.
As a result, Distimo refused to give an approximate estimate of how many percent at the end of this year will be the share of free downloads. But the company’s analysts are confident that this figure is more than the 89% stated by Gartner. However, both companies agree that it is the popularity of IAP (and, accordingly, applications built on them) that increases the share of free downloads.