With the App Store now holding over 100,000 apps, one would figure that only a few would enjoy the type of success that the big guys get. Appsfire's agrees and has some actual numbers on what happens along the looooong tail:
- Only 5 applications are on half of all iPhones/iPod Touch devices (FaceBook, AIM, Google?)
- The 1000th ranked app, which is the top 1%, is installed on "only" 1.76% of iPhones/ iPod touches. If there are 50 million devices out there, that is almost a million installations so that is still significant.
- After 20,000, the apps have almost no installations. Meaning 80% of apps never get any sort of popularity.
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Comments
Yeh, it sucks spending 2
Yeh, it sucks spending 2 months making a great app, giving it some nice spit and polish, and after a week in the App Store you check you sales and find you've made $4 dollars.
The only ones making money are the ones that Apple puts in their commercials. And the ones they put in their commercials aren't 99 cents apps. Coincendence? I think not. Apple likes featuring $20 bird apps because they like getting their 30%.
I've got to disagree about
I've got to disagree about the idea that only apps that get in the commercials can make any money - the 1,000th app on the list is installed in better than 1-1/2 percent of the phones out there, which is better than 3/4 of a million installs. That's $750,000 even at $0.99.
i also have to disagree
i also have to disagree because free apps like Shazam are featured in commercials.
Shazzam does lead to song
Shazzam does lead to song sales....
Is your app a slot machine
Is your app a slot machine type app? Just curious because I saw a very similar complaint in another forum yesterday. I was going to buy that app just out of sympathy for the developer, but when I went to the AppStore to check it out, it was based on a Mac OS game from 1989! Now I'm sure in 1989 the app was popular shareware as the author claims, but to think that a 20 year old game would translate to huge sales on a different device may be a bit naive. This particular app didn't look bad, but if someone's interested in slot machine type game play, this app looked very simple and DATED GRAPHICS compared to the other offerings out there that look much much slicker, with current looking graphics and features. I'm not at all surprised this app doesn't get a lot of sales compared to the competition. I certainly empathize with putting a couple of month's work into a project and not getting anything back in return, but you have to look at what the competition is offering and offer something better, which this particular app didn't.
Man, I know that sounds mean, and I didn't post it in the other forum, because I don't want to kick someone when they're feeling down, but maybe some developers need a reality check and a good look at what they're offering before being disappointed with their sales results. With 100,000 apps out there, you really have to offer something stand out to get the attention that will drive reviewers and Apple to recommend your app, which is what it takes to get in the big sales.
no suprise...
Last time I looked, Sturgeon's law hadn't been repealed.
Does appfire have enough
Does appfire have enough users using it to be statistically relevant? I never heard of that appfire before today (just saw the author self-recommend it over on another Web site's comments section). I'll probably install it, but with millions of iPhones out there, if this thing is only looking at a few hundred or even a just a thousand users, I have to say BS to any relevance it's reports have in the real-world.
Hahaha. Why are people
Hahaha. Why are people thumbs-downing that comment? Mindless sheep who just take any graph at face value without questioning the source and validity of the data? Sheesh.
I went over to the AppsFire blog and asked the size of their user base. It's "a few thousand" with "a bias due to the youth of their service". That's something to consider when evaluating the graphs they produce, isn't it?
I don't know enough about statistics to know if "a few thousand" self-selected* respondents out of tens of millions of iPhones sold represents any kind of base upon which to draw conclusions about how popular or how much use any piece of software gets. Do you really think it does?
*(I say self-selected because they have to download an app and choose to report witch apps they use/like. This would actually be an argument to support Pinch Media's model, which has problems as well; but I still hate that company.)
Personally, it's somewhat
Personally, it's somewhat irrelevant that many, if not most, Apps aren't very successful. That is ultimately a statement about the maker and not the market. Nobody blames Safeway or Walgreens if a product isn't successful, and we all know that most products fail in the market.
That said, there is a lot that Apple can do to come up with meaningful metrics of success for apps/app makers, and then cultivate those metrics by coming up with systems and support programs to grow successful apps makers. After all, their marketplace model is a GOVERNED one.
To me, that is better than pushing the 100K App milestone as the end-all, something that I blogged about in:
iPhone’s 100K Apps is the New '7-Minute Abs'
http://bit.ly/rJkEC
Check it out if interested.
Mark
How many copies sold make something a success?
I've been brainstorming an app that would have a total maximum audience of about 2000 people. If 200 people bought it, I'd be surprised. Such an app would be a success by my standards, but clearly not make much a blip in Appfire graph.
You're the one that
You're the one that determines if the app is success. Was the payback worth the effort of developing in your mind is all that matters. All the rest of this crap from Pinch Media and even AppsFire appears to be self-serving ways of making money off either the developer or the user. Pinch Media sells a service to the developer to get usage statistics, AppsFire's business model appears (after testing their app briefly just now) to be getting referral fees for click-throughs to apps that the user check out after seeing them within the AppsFire application. I find AppsFire's model less offensive, since it's user-initiated data collection, unlike Pinch Media, which is basically spyware as far as I am concerned (spyware in that it collects data about you and your device usage without your permission, or notification, and sends it to some mothership to be used without your knowledge).
Oh, boy, pay back is a bitch.
Apple fanbois wailed that most Windows-based software was "crap" when PC users claimed that PCs ran more software and a lot more exclusive software compared to 20th century Macs. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Apparently, the author believes that one can visit iTunes Store only to discover that 80% of software is cr-app for sale.
I wonder if iTunes poorly designed search features have made it too difficult for users to locate those obscure yet useful apps from the growing chaotic assemblage of apps. Then again, maybe that most apps are cr-apps. iTune Store search features are particularly purulent.
Everyone except the most
Everyone except the most diehard of fanbois has always said that the 10s of thousands of apps on the iTunes Apps Store were mostly crap or some form of fart sound maker, tip calculator, or flashlight. That doesn't change the fact that most of the software for Windows is ugly to use, inconsistent in interface, and generally crap compared to the (fewer) offerings for Macs.
And yes, iTunes has a lousy discovery model, though if you don't mind Apple tracking your apps usage on your iPhone, the newest version of the App Store on your iPhone now has a genius feature that will recommend new apps to you based on your usage habits. I haven't tried it, personally.
Difficult to find apps
As a developer of a small app that allows you to add birthdays to your contacts that get synchronized to google or to exchange (if you have your address book synced) supporting push notifications, I can say that the apps's store search function SUCKS, if you search for "Birthday" our app is not even listed although its name is "Birthdays".
Sometimes if you search for a partial string AND there are apps that match that partial string fully, those who only match part of the string are not returned, i.e search for "Birthday" and "Birthdays" ...
Search sucks
As a developer of a small app that allows you to add birthdays to your contacts that get synchronized to google or to exchange (if you have your address book synced) supporting push notifications, I can say that the apps's store search function SUCKS, if you search for "Birthday" our app is not even listed although its name is "Birthdays".
Sometimes if you search for a partial string AND there are apps that match that partial string fully, those who only match part of the string are not returned, i.e search for "Birthday" and "Birthdays" ...
As a developer of a small
As a developer of a small app that allows you to add birthdays to your contacts that get synchronized to google or to exchange (if you have your address book synced) supporting push notifications, I can say that the apps's store search function SUCKS, if you search for "Birthday" our app is not even listed although its name is "Birthdays".
Sometimes if you search for a partial string AND there are apps that match that partial string fully, those who only match part of the string are not returned, i.e search for "Birthday" and "Birthdays" ...
we gotcha
am i going to deal with this kind of redundancy in your app?
r4 revolution says,
Thanx for the valuable information. I wonder if iTunes poorly designed search features have made it too difficult for users to locate those obscure yet useful apps from the growing chaotic assemblage of apps. keep posting. Will be visiting back soon.