It seems that when it comes to making money from apps, free demo’s seem to be the way to go as a third of the top 100 grossing apps for iPhone are ‘freemium’ apps which make their money off having a demo version of the app which users can then pay for if they actually enjoy the app and want more from it.
Compared to the January list this year which only had two freemium apps in their top 50 list, we now see 34 of them making the top 100 list, with around 20 of those making the top 50 amongst that.
It seems that freemmium apps are quite rapidly raising in popularity with an obvious trend in users wishing to try before they buy, with hesitation to spend too much on something they may know close to nothing about. The appeal of seeing and downloading a free app would naturally be greater than one which doesn’t have this offer (even if the freemium apps do end up costing money in the end). Of course, since users don’t want to feel cheated freemium developers obviously are putting in the right mix of free content and desirable paid content to hit this list.
Some of the top grossing freemium apps which have hit the top 10 on the list include; Restaurant Store (#3), Tap Zoo (#4), NBA Game Time (#7), Kingdoms at War (#8), and Haypi Kingdom (#9).
So with the rising success of the freemium app will others follow in their wake, and will we be seeing the figure of top grossing iPhone apps get even higher in the next year? My guess: Yes.