Skyhook released a report today detailing some very startling distinctions between the Blackberry App World store, Apple App Store and Android Marketplace.  The most astounding fact was that Blackberry LBS apps are a full four times more expensive than similar apps on iPhone and Android.  While the average price for an LBS app on Blackberry is $13.60, average prices on iPhone and Android are $3.60 and $0.84, respectively.  We found 17 different types of apps that use location. The most popular location aware apps are Travel, Navigation, and Social Networking, but new types of apps, like Music, Finance, and Games, are also integrating location in new ways.

The Skyhook report also detailed the growing popularity of location apps by showing the surge in Skyhook location lookups per device, 5.4 per day in October and 6.1 per day in April.  This proves location is a core functionality and a integral part of a user’s everyday device use.

We expect to see a growing variety of location applications in all stores in the future, and it will be interesting to see if Blackberry will alter their prices to be more in line with its competitors.  Apple seems to be setting the standard as the most popular and successful app store to date and it may be difficult for future app stores to defy Apple’s model and achieve success.

For the Location Aware App Report, Skyhook will systematically research location‐aware applications in Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Marketplace and Blackberry’s AppWorld, and will publish the results of this research monthly. This report will include data on location‐aware apps from new stores as they are released (e.g. Nokia’s Ovi Store, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Marketplace).

The full report can be accessed at here: http://www.locationrevolution.com/stats/skyhookaprilreport.pdf

LocationRevolution.com is a new site that serves as a go-to guide for location-aware app information.  It includes featured LBS apps, comparative videos, stats and charts, developer info and much more.