Paid apps drew $8 billion in revenue during 2012

Paid apps in the top 5 online app stores brought in revenue of $8 billion in 2012 according to a new report from research2guidance. The report wasn't all rainbows for the apps business as it stated that we have hit the dangerous point in app stores where the number of new apps is greater than the demand for them. That is the law of diminishing returns at work, which means that the monetary reward for getting that new app up and running might just not be worth it. The app stores included in the figures include the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, BlackBerry App World, Windows Phone Store and Nokia Ovi Store.

The $8 billion generated by the top 5 app stores in 2012 was a rise of 27% over 2011's figures. On the other hand, the average revenue for paid apps dropped 27% from $26,720 in 2011 to $19,560 in 2012. That means that all of the increase in revenue last year can be explained as being the result of more apps being added to the stores. Keep in mind that these numbers include estimates for the fourth quarter based on actual data from Q1 through Q3 of last year.

The number of smartphone and tablet apps published hit 3 million in the third quarter of last year. The Apple App Store had a total of 951,890 apps as of the end of the third quarter while the Google Play Store was home to 453,719. The average retail price of a premium app was $2.82 at the end of Q3 with revenues hitting $3.4 billion in the three month period, which saw 12.4 billion downloads.

Other stats released by research2guidance found that last year, 179.7 million smartphones were shipped for a 16.7% gain sequentially, and were responsible for 40.4% of mobile device sales in 2012, up from 36.7%  in 2011. Samsung's market share was 31% of the mobile device market and Finnish based Nokia dropped out of the top five. During the the third quarter, Android was the only OS to gain market share according to research2guidance. Google's open source OS gained 5.3% in the three month period, while iOS lost 2.3% of market share.

source: research2guidance via TechCrunch