About a year ago, Apple [AAPL] started up the in-app purchase features. What this does is allows developers to create apps for iOS based devices and then let you purchase add-ons whilst in the app. An example could be extra levels of a game or more transactions in a financial package to name a few ideas.
GigaOM decided to have a look at the top 100 grossing apps today to see what was there and after checking through the list, they found that 34 apps out of the 100 were listed as being free and managed to be added to the top 100 grossing apps due to the in-app purchases that they allowed. Just a quick glance on the screen shot above shows that the top 5 contains 2 free apps.
These kinds of apps are labeled as “freemium” apps. Out of all apps in the app store, only a small percentage actually use this business model (lower than 2%). But, it appears that with some of them making up the top 100 grossing apps, that its a very successful business model to be used… ie, get the user to download the app, see if its good, if it is they purchase extra features to make it better.
Via: GigaOM
it’s a good idea to load up your iphone with lots of free apps before climbing Kilimanjaro.