Are Android apps more expensive than those on the iTunes App Store? Canalys believes so, saying the top 10 or 20 android paid-for apps cost an average of $2.75 more than those on the top 10 paid-for iPhone apps.

The analyst's results come from 5 countries (UK, Germany, the US, Singapore, and India), all following a similar pattern-- the top 10 Android apps costing an average of £3.47 - $4.09 each, while the top iPhone apps cost $0.99 - $1.04 on average. 

Canalys also says purchasing all top 100 paid-for Android apps in the US costs $374.37 (an average of $3.74 per app), while the top 100 paid-for iPhone apps cost $147 all together. 

Interestingly top paid-for apps on Android and iOS share "little commonality in any country," with the 2 operating systems offering very different retail environments. The iTunes App Store remains the more mature and tightly controlled, while the Android Market is open yet less secure and consumer friendly. As a result, price competitiveness is more crucial for success within the App Store, where publishers regularly offer discounts. 

Canalys suggests developers to offer more aggressive pricing-- more competition should encourage more first app purchases, drive greater download volumes and ultimately improve the general Android app ecosystem. 

Go Android Apps Are Too Expensive (Canalys)

IK Multimedia’s SampleTank 1.1 for iOS is now available as a universal app for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, through the iTunes App store. The update, for both regular and free versions, is available as a free download to existing users and also adds a 4-track MIDI recorder, a new beat-making interface, an expanded set of instruments and patterns, more compatibility with third party docks and much more.

Cloud-based gaming specialist OnLive steps towards the remote desktop market with OnLive Desktop-- a free iPad app providing "instant access" to the Microsoft Office Suite.

The company claims “OnLive Desktop is the first app to deliver a no-compromise, media-rich Windows desktop experience to iPad, opening up powerful new possibilities for consumers and businesses." Users should be able to view and edit cloud-hosted documents, complete with multi-touch gesture support and high-quality HD video playback.

A free option has 2GB of storage, while the subscription-based OnLive Desktop Pro will make 50GB of storage space available (together with a larger, yet to be announced application and feature set) for $9.99 monthly.

The company will also launch OnLive Enterprise-- a version aiming at business clients, allowing IT departments to have full control of user entitlements/access privileges to applications and associated data.

Go OnLive Desktop Announcement

by Catriona Campbell, Founder, Foviance

The experience of shopping with a tablet PC is much less satisfying than with your desktop computer. Although the iPad reinvented the tablet computer, unfortunately it appears that the actual surfing experience does not live up to expectations. In a survey of nearly 5,000 people undertaken by Foviance, a global Customer Experience consultancy, it’s clear that the customer experience of tablet computing is relatively poor – customers are up to 18% less happy with their tablet experience compared to their desktop PCs.

The study, which looked at what customers thought of customer experience in the retail, banking, travel and mobile phone markets in the 2nd Annual Customer Experience survey, commissioned by Foviance in association with Econsultancy.

Whilst companies are rushing to create apps on Apple, Android and Nokia stores it seems that they are not delivering for customers. The Apple store now has more than 200,000 apps, far more choice than the 40,000 products in a branch of Tesco but apps are not delivering the experience of their full-blown desktop cousins.