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.