Only 2% of Ovi apps use LBS
As a follow up to my post yesterday about the state of LBS available in the Ovi store, a new study done by Skyhook Wireless reveals that Nokia Ovi store has the smallest ratio of available apps to LBS apps with only 2% of Ovi apps using this feature.The report which analyzed the trends by looking at all the location-aware apps from Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Marketplace, Blackberry App World, Nokia’s Ovi Store, and the Palm App Catalog shows that $0.99 is the most popular paid category, and only a handful of apps sell for $6.00 to $8.99. Some location apps sell for $9.99 or higher in both stores. Most of these high-priced apps are navigation or sports-related like golf and sailing.
According to the report, there are currently 23 location-aware applications in the Ovi store and there is a about 43/57 split between paid and free apps. The average price of an app is $3.11 with Utilities and social networking services being the most popular category in the Ovi store.
Now the real question is why are developers afraid to integrate more LBS apps for Symbian platform. Nokia has been committed in this space with several high profile acquisitions including the $8.1 billion takeover of Navteq so it is surprising to learn that we haven’t seen any innovative products come out.
