Pew Research Center: 80% of the apps on the Google Play Store are free(mium)

A Pew Research Center study analysed over one million apps apps on the Google Play Store and came to some interesting conclusions. The detailed report can be found here, and since it can make for a very dull read, here are some of the highlights. The largest category of apps was education (at 8% of all apps), but only by a slim margin (0.3%). All told, Pew reports that, “Eight categories of apps (Education, Entertainment, Personalization, Tools, Lifestyle, Books and Reference, Business, and Travel & Local) comprised more than half of the apps available for download (53.58% in total).” The least populated category was music apps at a measly 0.06% (668 apps). More interestingly, the Pew study revealed that about 82% of all apps on the Play Store are free, and not all of them ad-supported. That said, the study also reveals that 47% of the apps were installed fewer than 500 times and at least 90% of the apps had been installed fewer than 50,000 times. A disheartening figure. Unsurprisingly, the most popular apps by far were Google’s own apps such as Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, etc., which were installed over a billion times.