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Survey: 70% of all iPhone Apps May be Free

According to a survey of developers conducted this week at Apple's
World Wide Developer Conference, and highlighted over at Apple
Insider, many of the potential applications being developed for the
iPhone will have an average cost of $3.00 or under -- and many others
may be completely free. The survey, conducted by Piper Jaffray analyst
Gene Munster right after the Steve Jobs Keynote on Monday, revealed
some other interesting information besides potential application
pricing.

The survey also found that 50% of the developers plan on building
applications only for the iPhone while the other 50% were going to
make application for the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and for Macs as well.
In addition, Munster found that many developers were also authoring
what he called "Enterprise apps" as well as entertainment apps,
location-based apps which take advantage of the iPhone's GPS
capabilities and video games.

According to Munster: "We see this as a positive indicator of the
potential for Enterprise adoption of the iPhone. We found the average
cost of iPhone apps on the App Store to be $2.29, with 71% being
free." So, if you love the iPhone or iPod Touch and plan on putting
lots of applications on them, if the survey proves correct, this is
good news for you.

MORE

In the din of announcements from WWDC on Monday, one of the
underreported features for iPhone apps is "ad hoc" app distribution:
registering up to 100 iPhones, and distributing your apps yourself.
Macworld's John Welch has a good overview of Ad Hoc and enterprise
distribution, and what it means for IT departments. "[H]aving your
applications distributed from your own servers on your own network
just makes sense," he writes. "It makes security issues simpler, saves
on external bandwidth usage, and simplifies the process of adding,
updating, and removing applications."

Webmonkey, on the other hand, completely missed this part of the
keynote, writing a review of the App Store that omits the ad hoc
distribution plan and calls the App Store's exclusivity "yuck." Plus,
it neglects to mention the still-thriving jailbreak community, and the
legions of Installer.app users.

Ad hoc distribution means great things for proprietary apps for teams,
classrooms, and large organizations.