Verizon has some interesting statistics on the success of in-app purchases on iOS. So are they successful? In a word, yes.
In fact, Verizon has revealed that 72 percent of revenue from iPhone apps comes from in-app purchases. This is based on the 200 highest-grossing applications in the app store as of July 2011. Only 4 percent of all iPhone apps utilize in-app purchasing, yet Apple unveiled the developer API over two years ago back in 2009.
But the 72 percent for revenue isn’t a consistent statistic from years before. In July of 2010, in-app purchases accounted for only 28 percent revenue. This year, that number skyrocketed by nearly three times. For a breakdown of the data, free apps with in-app purchasing actually represent 48 percent of the revenues while paid apps with purchasing represent 24 percent and paid apps without purchasing represent 28 percent.
When Scott Forstall announced the API to the world in 2009, he specifically noted only paid apps can integrate in-app purchases and that free apps will always stay free so users won’t have to deal with any surprises. Toward the end of that year, Apple decided to remove that limitation, effectively allowing free apps to act as demo versions until the user chooses to upgrade and get the full experience.
At first, there was a little speculation over whether or not developers would implement in-app purchases in ways that would annoy the end-user and cripple the experience. It doesn’t look like that’s too much of a problem anymore.