Analyst Pinch Media: Over half of iPhone apps are pirated

You can't go five minutes these days without hearing about iPhone piracy, but sadly it's a big part of the software industry and one that's here to stay if the following statistics have anything to say.

According to Greg Yardley, CEO of Manhattan-based Pinch Media, losses from piracy are a rule and not an exception, and over half of apps have been pirated.

“What we’ve determined is that over 60 percent of iPhone applications have definitively been pirated based on our checks and the number is probably higher than that," Yardley reveals.

Pinch Media provides analytic software for iPhone developers, which Yardley says is used by 8 per cent of the iPhone App market.

The Pinch Media software allows developers to have a good overview on the performance of their app, with data such as how many are using it.

“What developers lose is not necessarily the sale because I don’t believe pirates would have bought the game if they hadn’t stolen it. But when there is a back-end infrastructure associated with a game, that is an ongoing incremental cost that becomes a straight loss for the developer," Yardley explains.

“Many developers run servers to provide content dynamically, they run high-score servers, and that sort of thing costs money. If your application is pirated, you quickly find that cutting steeply into your profit margin, especially given the low price point of iPhone games.”