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A Freemium Mobile World?

Posted on 13. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci in Mobile Stores

With 75,000 apps in the App Store, how do you convince a user to buy your paid app? The magic word seems to be Freemium.

Who says so?

First it was Admob in its July mobile metrics report. The mobile ad network run a survey on about 1,200 users of the Apple App Store and Android Market and found that the top reason for purchasing an app was that users had liked the free version.

What conversions are we talking about?

According to a recent Mobclix’s study:

-Apps with a lite version will sell 2 or 3 times more.

-Supposedly from 50% to 60% of the lite version users upgrade to the paid version!

Here’s the full video of the event.

It would be interesting to know what categories are experiencing the most success with this model. If it’s just games or if it applies across the board.

Another point worth noting from the Mobclix presentation, is that even if you add the lite version later, you’re still going to experience the same bump in sales.

So, watch the video, think about your strategy and next steps. But watch out from the freemium buzz virus!  Building a freemium model is about re-inventing a business which offers real value to the end-user (additional levels of the game would do it), charging for what is scarce, not a mere giving away stuff for free.

Tags: Freemium