Study reveals when to shop the App Store for the best deals

Apples iOS App Store will almost certainly see a lot of sales and bargain basement pricing during this upcoming Thanksgiving weekend and likely into Cyber Monday. But when are the best times to shop the store in general? Thats one question European advertising network madvertise set out to answer in a new study released Wednesday.

The App Store is a bit of rolling sea of pricing turmoil, according to madvertises findings in the U.K. App Store, with regular highs and lows that make shopping on certain days more advisable than on others. Fridays turn out to be the best possible time to spend your hard-earned cash, since 19.58 percent of iPad and 18 percent of iPhone app prices on average see a drop just before the weekend, and none of the top five categories of apps see any price increases on a Friday.

Dont jump the gun and think you can get away with buying earlier, though; Thursdays are the worst possible day to shop, with 17.9 percent of iPad and 17.36 percent of iPhone apps showing an increase in price that time of week. Thursdays are good for one thing, however, since along with Wednesdays its the most common time for new apps to arrive in the App Store. Updates also come most frequently on Thursdays, with Tuesdays coming in a close second.

Madvertises study, which it created in conjunction with AppZapp, a bargain-hunting tool for App Store shoppers, concludes that Friday is the best day to shop for apps. Thats not toosurprising, since a lot of publishers seem to promote their wares with weekend sales in order to lock in lucrative positions high up in the App Store rankings.

All bets are off during this weekend, owing to Black Friday, but theres little reason to doubt Friday wont be a great time to pick up some cheap apps, both in the U.S. and abroad, too.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

China Watch: Magical New Maglev, Fire the Ambassador?

Live Blog: GMIC G-Startup Competition 2011

Chinese Pinterest Huaban.com Grabs Money and Attention