Android Market Apps vs. Apple Store: Which is More Expensive?

The heavy price tag attached to Apple's iPhone series may actually save money in the long run. A new study from Canalys shows that the prices for the top paid-for apps in the Android market are dramatically higher than those in Apple's store.

To purchase the top 100 paid apps in the Android Market, one would have to shell out a whopping $374.37. This over twice as much as the cost attached to Apple's top paid apps, which average out to $147.00, or $1.47 per app.

That developers can apparently charge more for their apps on Android and make it into the top paid list is clearly a positive, said Canalys Managing Director Rachel Lashford in the study. But the reality is that with fewer people willing to purchase apps on Android than on IOS today, there is more of a necessity to do so.

A narrower perspective honing in on the top 10 or 20 download paid apps revealed the same results. However, when studying the download trends in the U.S., research found that only 19 apps appeared in the top paid lists for both stores. But Canalys Senior Analyst Tim Shepherd attributes the financial variations to different market styles.

Apple's App Store and the Android Market are very different retail environments, said Shepherd according to the study. The former is now a mature but still very closely controlled retail environment, while the latter remains more open but also less secure and consumer friendly.

Even though the prices of apps may differ in the two stores, they do share a common factor. Apple, Google, Amazon Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard Co. reached an agreement with Calif. state regarding mobile privacy policies. Today the Wall Street Journal reported that the state's attorney general Kamala D. Harris agreed on a new law requiring apps to have privacy policies.

Harris said that about 22 of the 30 most-download apps don't have privacy policies, according to the Wall Street Journal.

We have populations without knowledge of [mobile technology's] potential users who are potentially vulnerable, she said. We seek to give them tools to protect themselves.