Abilityhub

The app store will shortly be coming to town. And what does the app store have in (ahem) store for us? Free software!

While this wasn’t the original plan of the Apple bunch, it is quickly becoming a reality if figures from an industry survey are to be believed.

Apple planned for the apps in the app store to sell for an average of $10 each. From this $10 sale they would take a $3 for their trouble. It’s not a lot when you say it like that, but when you say it like this: “there will be millions of downloads”, it soon takes on a different meaning.

So what of this free software then?

Industry analyst Gene Munster conducted a survey of 20 developers that planned to release software for the app store. These developers revealed that over 70% of those apps would be available to the grateful customer for free. Of the remaining apps for which a charge would be made, the price was looking to be settling on an average of around $2.29 – a far cry from Apple’s estimates.

Munster also discovered that half of those surveyed were working only on iPhone apps and half were working on apps for the iPhone and for the Mac environment.

Free software all around, then!

Where should I download my iPhone games from? I’ve seen lots of advice against ‎downloading from torrent or P2P sites, and I’ve heard bad things about Warez. Whilst ‎these avenues might mean I get free iPhone games, there is also the chance that I ‎could pick up a virus, and no game is worth a dead iPhone.‎

Next I could pay identify the games that I want to play and make a beeline for them, ‎paying the premium for getting the latest in digital entertainment. If I knew anything ‎about gaming – or indeed about what titles were out at the moment – then I’d probably ‎go this route. Unfortunately I know next to nothing and I fear I’d be in danger of ‎tossing my money away.‎

So I come to what is probably my preferred option: membership sites. With a iPhone ‎games membership site I can pay a monthly fee (or in some cases a single upfront fee) ‎and for that I will be able to download as many games as I want. This seems to me to ‎be a perfect solution since I can try a number of games to get my head around the ‎whole situation; I’m also not in danger of just choosing the wrong game before I ‎realize I don’t like it! ‎

If the rumors are to be believed then Apple is planning to release its brand new 3g iPhone towards the end of June this year. This brand new model, sources tell us, will be thinner than the original by 2.5mm (which might not sound a lot but is around 21% thinner); it will also be subject to substantial subsidies from carrier AT&T.

The 3g iPhone may be offered with as much as $200 cut from the price of the phone itself, with AT&T making this back over the period of the contract. In fact with the average 3g iPhone user racking up a hefty $100 tab each month due to the higher priced data and calling plan this return shouldn’t be so long in coming.

The news of this cut will please potential buys, but how will current owners feel when they see a newer 3g iPhone model being offered at a fraction of the price they paid?