iPhone apps grew the most in 2010 in terms of the number of applications in the United States, says the latest yearly report by app store analytics firm Distimo. The report covers Apple App Store for iPad and iPhone, Google Android Market, BlackBerry App World, Palm App Catalog, Nokia Ovi Store, Windows Marketplace for Mobile (6.x), and Windows Phone 7 Marketplace for the year 2010.
Highlights of the report include:
* Apple grew the most last year in terms of the number of apps in the United States, Android and BlackBerry showed higher percentage growth, which you would expect as they started from a lower base.
* The top 300 free applications had more than 3 million downloads every day in December 2010, while only 350,000 paid applications were downloaded each day. The high free download figures are leading developers to switch to in-App money making strategies versus sales of their Apps.
* The revenue share generated by in-app purchases from the top free apps more than doubled for both the iPhone and iPad. However, the revenue share generated by in-app purchases from free applications is lower on iPad at 15% versus 34% on iPhones.
Scott iPhones
If you’ve ever been skeptical about the popularity of Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch apps, Apple has some figures for you. The company announced today that users have downloaded 2 billion apps from the App Store. Some other figures from Apple:
* Over 85,000 apps are available from the App Store
* There are over 50 million iPhones and iPod touches in the wild
* There are over 125,000 developers signed up for the company’s Developer program
With Apple taking a 30 percent chunk of every app sold, the popularity of the App Store is generating a nice, steady trickle of revenue. Of course, many popular apps are available for free, but those still contribute to the popularity of the App Store, which, in turn, helps drive iPhone and iPod touch sales.
Apple celebrated the billionth download in April of this year, and it has managed another 2 billion in just over 10 months. Can McDonald’s with its “Billions and Billions Served” keep up?
Scott iPhones
Earlier in the year, when we said that Flash is dead & the iPad is its tombstone, our thoughts were primarily on the 100 million + iOS devices that people were happily using, Flash free.
Many thought that this trend towards people working blissfully Flash-free would end as people using the larger-form-factor iPad ran into sites with broken Flash elements.
But no – the iPad isn’t just the fastest-selling gadget ever, the device has the highest satisfaction rating of any product that a leading consumer satisfaction index has ever tracked.
The “Flash Tax”
Now Apple’s Macs are shipping Flash-free, and it’s highlighting the “Flash tax” – the hit Flash puts on your computer’s performance, browser stability and battery life.
According to testing by Chris Foresman of Ars Technica, Flash can cut your battery life by a third, just to display banner ads.
“Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably,” notes Forman. “As much as 33 percent, in our testing.”
If you’re like most laptop users, you’ve got a browser window open all the time. If so, Flash is probably chowing through a large chunk of your battery life, so that it can keep some banner ads blinking.
With Flash missing in action on the most popular mobile platforms and now on the latest crop of Macs, Flash is dead as a de facto Internet standard.
From: http://www.podcastingnews.com/content/2010/11/flash-is-dead-as-a-de-facto-internet-standard/
Scott iPhones
A survey released Thursday by International Data Corporation shows Apple jumped past RIM during the third quarter of 2010. The iPhone-maker shipped 14.1 million phones during the quarter, representing 4.1 per cent of the worldwide mobile phone market. In the same quarter, according to IDC, RIM shipped 12.4 million phones, or 3.6 per cent of the market.
Apple now sits behind LG, Samsung and Nokia, who control a far larger percentage of the overall market but all lost or gained very little market share during the last quarter, as more consumers switch from traditional cellphones to smart phones such as the BlackBerry and the iPhone.
“[The] mobile phone makers that are delivering popular smart-phone models are among the fastest growing firms,” said IDC senior research analyst Kevin Restivo. “Vendors that aren’t developing a strong portfolio of smart phones will be challenged to maintain and grow market share in the future.”
Mr. Restivo predicts that smart phones will drive the overall mobile phone market until the end of 2014, with 55-per-cent, year-over-year growth in 2010.
But such predictions are perhaps more worrying for traditional handset makers, rather than RIM, which still saw its shipment numbers increase even as it was surpassed by Apple on the IDC list. Of the top three worldwide vendors, only Samsung, which has aggressively pursued a smart-phone strategy based on Google’s Android operating system, saw significant market share growth during the third quarter of 2010. Nokia, the world’s top-selling handset-maker, and LG, both lost ground.
Scott iPhones
Interesting… think it is coincidence that the only person who used text message marketing in the 2010 Calgary campaign for Mayor won? This alone should show you that mobile marketing is extremely powerful. Business owners, corporations, organizations, churches, and politicians are only now awakening to its potential.
Nenshi was smart enough to recognize that marketing IS communication. And since text messages have a 97% open rate it makes it the MOST effective form of marketing that we know of.
Watch for information about how you can use text messaging in your business.
Scott iPhones
Owen Goss is the developer of Dapple, a cute color matching puzzle game for the iPhone (you may also remember his memory leaks tutorial here on Mobile Orchard). Despite having a slick site, good gameplay videos, and so forth, it hasn’t sold too well. So Owen’s written The Numbers Post (aka Brutal Honesty) where he reveals how it has sold so far and what effect a review on Kotaku had.
Owen had a development budget of $32,000 for the game but in the first month made $535 in revenue, despite a glowing review from major gaming site Kotaku.
http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-numbers-post-aka-brutal-honesty/
Todd Bernhard points out that Owen didn’t spend any money on advertising and had no free “Lite” version for people to try, whereas he’s spending $1000 in advertising and his own app has entered the top 100 on the store. Others complain that $4.99 is a bad price point for a “simple” game.
Scott iPhones
As part of Apple’s one billion app countdown for their iTunes App Store, they have also compiled a list of the all-time top 20 apps [App Store] for both Paid and Free apps.
Perhaps most interesting is what the potential market for a very successful paid iPhone app might be. A few numbers have been released for some of the top iPhone apps that gives us an idea of the numbers involved. Here is a collection of the known sales numbers for some of the top 20 paid apps. App titles link directly to App Store.
#2. Koi Pond – The New York Times published just a few days ago reveals that Blimp Pilots’ virtual pond app has been downloaded an estimated 900,000 times giving the developers about $623,000 after Apple’s cut.
#3. Enigmo – Pangea’s puzzle game appeared early in the App Store. Pangea’s Brian Greenstone recently revealed in a YouTube video that Enigmo sold 810,000 units between July 2008 and January 2009 (likely the bulk of sales). The price of this app has bounced between $9.99 and $0.99 making it difficult to estimate earnings.
#12. Pocket God – This recent hit is another entertainment app that puts you in control of a small island of inhabitants. Bolt Creative’s Dave Castelnuovo revealed in a TouchArcade forum post that their app had sold about 500,000 copies as of late March. An impressive feat since it has only been around since January, earning the developers about $350,000 so far.
#19. iShoot – An artillery game by one-man company Ethan Nicholas who is the latest rags-to-riches App Store story. Nicholas revealed to the New York Times that he had made $800,000 in five months. His app has held mostly at a $2.99 pricepoint, which estimates his total sales at over 380,000 downloads.
Scott iPhones
Mixology, a drink recipe and bartending iPhone app by Digital Outcrop, recently ran a very successful campaign on the ADMOB network to increase downloads of their free app. With their goal of boosting its ranking in the App Store in mind, AdMob worked with them to create a burst campaign designed to push Mixology into the Top 5 of the Lifestyle category and the Top 100 overall ranking within the App Store.
The campaign drove more than 23,000+ downloads of the Mixology app; an 845% growth in downloads from the day before the campaign started to the second day the campaign. After running the campaign, Digital Outcrop used AdMob’s House ads to push downloads of their paid version of the Mixology app, Mixologist; it successfully moved the paid app into the Top 100 overall paid app list and came in as #1 in Lifestyle category.
http://blog.admob.com/2009/12/14/847-increase-in-downloads-for-digital-outcrop%E2%80%99s-mixology-iphone-app/
Scott iPhones
