Anyways: I have spent a total of $164.21 dollars over the year. App Store Expense Monitor says $246.99. That’s a huge difference. May be a cool way of tracking the “value” off your collection, but not really your app expenses. Looking more into the this software, it seems it’s best use is by keeping it running and it will log the price of apps as you buy them, provided you either buy them from iTunes or sync daily (I rarely sync more than twice a week.)

Anyways, since I went thorugh this I figure I may write something about what I see in my own history:

Despite me having my iPhone for over 2 years, I only started buying apps in March 2010.

My first paid app was Broken Sword: Director’s Cut v 1.1 for 4.99 for the iPhone. Shortly after this I got my second app, Dungeon Hunter in a 99c sale.

My spending history by month goes like this:

2010-03 $05.98 2 purchases
2010-04 $00.00 0 purchases
2010-05 $00.00 0 purchases
2010-06 $11.99 1 purchases
2010-07 $00.00 0 purchases
2010-08 $16.86 8 purchases
2010-09 $25.93 7 purchases
2010-10 $14.91 15 purchases
2010-11 $54.67 33 purchases
2010-12 $33.87 13 purchases

December is nowhere near complete, as we are not done with the month and I have not received my huge Christmas purchase receipt.

This purchase count includes in-app purchases as individual purchases.

Although not steady increase, we can see that, at least if we summarize by quarter, I slowly increase the amount of purchases. I think this has a lot to do with slowly gaining confidence on the market.

The more I buy, the more likely I am to buy more. May be a bit self-centered but I dare bet most people are the same. It is very likely users will buy more apps after enjoying the fruits of their first purchases, with any disappointing paid app slowing this increase.

I’m basing this in one huge omission. When I first heard about the iPhone gaming revolution, I looked at the app store and bought a game, just to see how things worked. The game in question was horribly disappointing and it was the reason for me not to pay a second look at the entire app store for such a long time. At that time I didn’t bother storing my receipts, it was a one-time thing after all.

So my views may be biased, but I still think they make sense and may apply to many users.

What this makes me assume is that after time passes, users slowly start trusting their money into the app store more and more, specially if they have fun with their purchases. The time may come when long time consumers may easily dedicate 60 dollars a month to the app store instead of spending the same amount into expensive console games.

Also, although 99c games and apps (be it regular price or temporary deals) may be great ways to point new app-curious users into the bliss that is the app store paid content, apps don’t need to cost 99c or 1.99 to be successful. Some of my favorite games (my favorite category) has been Aralon: Sword and Shadow, Plats Vz Zombies and Broken Sword. I don’t regret spending the amount I spent on any of those.

App Store Expense Monitor will pull the current price, that will result in extremely inaccurate reports.

I have an alternate route, but it may take a bit of time. I have never deleted any of the receipts I get from Apple for my purchases. I archive every single one of those emails. I may be able to go back through those and see how much I actually spent, and when I did.