According to a report released this week by Distimo, a market research company focusing on technology, app sales on Apple’s App Store are enjoying better sales than Google’s Android Market.

 

The report, which is freely available from the site, elaborated that both the Apple App Store for iPad and the Apple App Store for iPhone outsold the Google Android Market in terms of the total revenue generated by the 200 highest grossing apps.

 

Additionally, the Apple App store for iPhone generated about four times the revenue that was generated in the Google Android Market.

 

 

For developers though, 2011 was the year where in-app purchases and the freemium business model became amongst the most important monetisation strategies. The freemium business model enables one to download and play a game, for example, for free, and then purchase in-app upgrades if so desired.

 

The report elaborated that half of the revenue of the 200 top grossing apps in the Apple App Store for iPhone is currently generated by freemium apps. This proportion was found to be even higher in the Google Android Market, where 65% of the revenue from the top grossing apps is being generated by freemium apps.

 

Extrapolating, this means that users may be more willing to pay for iOS apps than they are for Android ones, as well as that the freemium business model is even more popular on the Android Market.

 

 

Interestingly though, a dip was observed in the number of downloads generated in the respective Apple App Stores just prior to the release of a new Apple device, such as iPhone or iPad.

 

The number of iPad app downloads was at a yearly low in February, just before the launch of the iPad 2, but they immediately increased again in March. The same happened with the launch of the iPhone 4s in October.

 

 

While the Android Market and Apple’s App Store are certainly leading the pack, the report continued that nearly all of the app stores more than doubled their number of available apps in 2011. Windows Phone 7 Marketplace showed the largest relative growth of all stores with more than 400% year-on-year growth. Combined, the seven major app stores now offer more than one million apps.

 

The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace emerged as the fourth largest app store when looking at the total number of available games, having surpassed both the Nokia Ovi Store and BlackBerry App World. The Amazon Appstore – larger than both the Nokia Ovi Store and BlackBerry App World as well in terms of available games – is now the fifth largest app store for games.

 

 

The Distimo  report further awarded its top ten most popular apps, chosen from both free and paid apps across all platforms, based on which apps generated the most downloads worldwide. The winner was Angry Birds, with second place going to Facebook.

This was followed by Skype, Angry Birds Rio, Google Maps, iBooks, Angry Birds: Seasons, Fruit Ninja, Talking Tom Cat and Twitter.

In recent news, Google celebrated reaching 10 billion downloads on the Android Market by offering a ten day sale of top ranking apps.