A study of the Apple App Store has found that 85 per cent of all news apps are available free of charge. 

The study, which was conducted by mobile ad network madvertise and the AppZapp app shopping guide, says that the situation is reversed for games, where most apps are paid. 

According to the madvertise study, there are 1,757 free iPad news apps on the App Store, as opposed to 310 paid news apps. 

The news category for the iPhone also offers more app at no cost: an iPhone user can download more than 70 per cent of the applications for free. There are 7,148 free apps and 2,755 chargeable ones, according to madvertise. 

The most popular category is games. There are 8,408 games apps for the iPad, and 70 per cent of them are paid for. 

Games on the iPhone is a little more skewed towards free downloads, with 39.5 per cent available for free. There are 57,215 games available for the iPhone in the UK. 

The second most popular category in the Apple App Store is books. For iPad, around 19 per cent are available for free, while on the iPhone the figure is 14 per cent. 

madvertise also documents the mean price for apps on Apples App Store, and books come out top here, with an average price of £7.42 for an iPad book, and £4.51 for iPhone books. Health and fitness also represents an expensive category – £7.11 on average for iPad and £3.03 on iPhone. 

madvertises report is available for free download from the madvertise website.