025-0700 Factors influencing prices in the mobile apps’ store distribution model: An empirical study Paolo Roma, Università degli Studi di Palermo, DICGIM – Management Research Group, Viale delle Scienze, 90128, Palermo, Italy. Email:
[email protected]; phone: +39 091 23861873. Giovanni Perrone, Università degli Studi di Palermo, DICGIM – Management Research Group, Viale delle Scienze 90128, Palermo, Italy. Email:
[email protected]; phone: +39 091 23861835. Salvatore Giardina, Università degli Studi di Palermo, DICGIM – Management Research Group, Viale delle Scienze 90128, Palermo, Italy. Email:
[email protected]; phone: +39 091 23861873. Ciro Antonio Enea, Università degli Studi di Palermo, DICGIM – Management Research Group, Viale delle Scienze 90128, Palermo, Italy. Email:
[email protected]; phone: +39 091 23861873. 1 Abstract Mobile apps are expected to generate $38 billion by 2015. With a growing number of app stores and devices, developers try to catch new business opportunities. However, apps’ pricing has become a critical issue. Based on data collected from major app stores, this study explores the factors influencing apps’ price. Keywords: App store distribution model, Pricing, Smartphone industry, Empirical analysis. 2 1. Introduction The Mobile Commerce (or, sometimes referred to as Mobile e-Commerce) could be defined as the electronic commerce over mobile devices (Anckar and D’Incau, 2002) or alternatively as the product resulting from the interaction among business transactions, Internet applications and mobile communications (Grami and Schell, 2004). In the early 2000s the context was dominated by the Mobile Portal model, which has been the foundation of the Mobile Commerce value chain according to Barnes (2002). Mobile Portals were mostly managed and strongly controlled by Mobile Network Operators (MNO), which constructed a highly centralized model (Kuo and Yu, 2006).