Tag: App Store

Thanks to a reader for asking this question: “Wouldn’t it be more telling to look at the monthly rate of downloads / device at any given time?”

Yes it would.

Here’s what can be derived based on download rates and installed base of devices.

Continue reading “iOS users download about 5 apps every month”

After reviewing the payments to suppliers, we can look at the store’s revenue generation rate. With the same assumptions, we have the following chart:

We will have to wait for another report to see whether the recent burst of volume from apps is sustained[1], but the trend shows income from apps narrowing the gap to music. Continue reading “How long before apps overtake physical video game content sales?”

The iTunes App Store is about to reach 10 billion downloads. That makes this a good time to revisit app growth metrics and compare them with the other digital media store that we have data for: the iTunes Music Store.

First, the download totals as time series[1]:

Continue reading “More than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold”

Thirty days after the launch of the iTunes App Store, Apple announced that 60 million apps were downloaded in the first month of operations generating sales of $30 million. “This thing’s going to crest a half a billion, soon,” Jobs said adding that it may be a “$1 billion marketplace at some point in time.”

Mr. Jobs was being modest.

To see how modest we have the following data:

If the current download rate is maintained (17 million apps/day) and if the pricing of $0.29/app is preserved, then $1.8 billion will have been spent on iOS apps this year.

With the rate of downloads increasing as steeply as it is, $2 billion in sales is not unlikely in the third year of the store. Twice what Jobs was predicting for “some point in time”.

The other line in the graph is the iTunes music download rate. I’ve written about it before and pointed out that the point of inflection in the download rate coincided with the increase in price for songs from $0.99 to $1.29. Not much more to say here except that the trend continues and music downloads continue to slow.

As far as Apple is concerned, the slowdown in iTMS is more than offset by the increase in iTAS. As far as the music industry is concerned, I don’t think CD sales are increasing. Does anyone know?

At the September 1st music event, Apple announced that 6.5 billion apps were downloaded and that there had been 120 million iOS devices sold.

This works out to 54 apps per iOS device.

On June 7 Apple reported 5 billion apps over 100 million iOS devices or an average of 50 apps for iOS device.

On April 8th, I computed that the app attach rate was 47.

Is this rate noteworthy?

Let’s rewind to two years ago.  August 27th, 2008, soon after the App store launched.

Nokia had just declared that its users had downloaded over 90 million applications over the past 2 years. An analyst estimated that over 100 million users globally use Nokia smartphones/converged devices, implying an attach rate of less than 1 app/smartphone.

My, how expectations have changed.