Interesting analysis from BGR’s Tero Kuittinen:

The app market has evolved from paid apps to free apps and as it turns out, the free apps proved to be stronger revenue-generators. Except that it’s not quite that simple. There is another, rare category of apps — games as vehicles for merchandising and franchising deals. This requires hundreds of millions of downloads to build brand awareness to the level that persuades major retailers such as Toys R Us and Hot Topic to pledge marketing support. …

A new wave of game vendors has figured out how to foster gradual growth of a loyal user base willing to pay for multiple upgrades inside the game.