Free SmartPhone Apps

Eighty-nine percent of the apps downloaded during 2012 were free programs. So says Gartner in a study that was printed in the October 5, 2012 issue of Processor Magazine.

Developers of smartphone apps use a "novel" concept called in-app purchasing. Identical in almost every way to the 25-year-old concept of shareware marketing, in-app purchases allow users to try the free version, and only buy an application after they've tried it.

By 2016, Gartner predicts, in-app purchases will account for 41 percent of store revenue at the various smartphone and tablet app stores. They also predict that 30% of the total downloads will be for apps that use this not-so-novel in-app purchasing model.