Distimo Blog – 2009

Archive for October, 2009

Free Apps Penetrating Top Grossing Rankings on Apple’s App Store

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

With the release of iTunes 9, Apple introduced a new category, Top Grossing, ranking the apps that are grossing most on the App Store. The price point that occured most today was $4.99 among these 100 apps (27 apps priced at this pricepoint in the US). However, in some countries, free apps penetrate the top grossing ranks as well.

Yes indeed, this is caused by the fact that these free apps have implemented in-app purchases, which were introduced a few days ago. This results in free apps making revenue as well, and apparently, Apple takes into account these in-app purchases for determining rankings in the Grossing lists.

According to our data, which takes into account all countries worldwide, there have been 12 free apps that entered the overall grossing list on Apple’s App Store. Comics (iTunes link), even achieved a ranking of 7 in some countries, outperforming apps such as Fifa 10 (€7.99, rank 17) and Tweetie 2 (€2.39, rank 11).

We expect more free apps to enter the top grossing lists soon, as more free apps will implement in-app purchases and consumers getting more accustomed to buying items inside apps as well.

Tags: Apple App Store for iPhone, in-app purchase, top grossing
Posted in Apple App Store for iPhone | 1 Comment »

Palm App Catalog gets a website

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Previously, the Palm App Catalog was only accessible from the Palm Pre and Pixi. Now however, a part of the Catalog is also accessible from the web, right here. It is a feature page, introducing people to the kind of apps that are available on the Catalog.

The website is purely a showcase of apps, it is not possible to download or purchase applications from the site. About 1/3rd of the apps on this page are Games, with a total of 85 apps being shown.

The Palm App Catalog is gaining significance: last weekend, 40 apps were added, and about a month ago they released its new version of the Catalog with support for paid apps (examples here). Additionally, more and more countries are supported, increasing the amount of consumers being able to access the Catalog.

Tags: Palm App Catalog
Posted in Palm App Catalog | 1 Comment »

Apple App Store: half billion downloads in last quarter

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Apple released its results for its fiscal 2009 fourth quarter ending September 26. Like in the previous announcements, some interesting new iPhone milestones have been reached:

Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones in the quarter, compared with 5.2 million in the third quarter of this year. This represent an increase in iPhone sales of over 40%.
Since the Appe Store launch, over 2 billion apps were downloaded. Of these, half a billion were in this last quarter alone.

The download rate in the App Store is speeding up quickly. Last April, Apple announced 1 billion downloads in 9 months. In only the last three months, half a billion apps were downloaded from the store. Apple will start selling the iPhone in China next month, which could have a substantial impact on the already fast growing download rates.

The Apple App Store has already been available in China for some months, preceding the iPhone launch. In this version of the store, no Games are available and all prices are in US dollars, whereas for most countries local currencies are used. But these things might change when the iPhone is officially launched. More details coming this month.

Tags: Apple App Store for iPhone
Posted in Apple App Store for iPhone | 1 Comment »

Apple’s “Apps for Everything”: influence on ranking

Monday, October 19th, 2009

September 30th, Apple launched its Apps for Everything website. We were interested in seeing whether the impact on rankings of the featured applications would be significant, as we previously saw that being featured in Apple’s App Store Picks has a significant influence on ranking.

Apps for Everything features multiple applications for certain categories defined by Apple, such as Apps for Cooks, and Apps for Keeping Current. For each of these categories, we analyzed the category rankings of the app that was first mentioned on the site. Below you can find their rankings overtime, with the red dotted line indicating the day the site was launched:

Apple's Apps for Everything

We can see that for most apps, the ranking improved, indicating an increase in downloads at the time the Apps for Everything site was put online. However, these were the apps that were most likely to see an increase in popularity because they were the first being mentioned on each category site.

Apps for Everything is not embedded in the App Store on the iPhone, so only consumers that go to the iPhone website will see this. The largest part of these consumers will not have an iPhone (yet), since purchasing one will be the main reason for going to this website.

A couple of months ago, Apple started promoting Apple’s App Store Picks, featuring several applications within the App Store, which had a clear positive influence on application popularity.

We think the impact of Apps for Everything on application popularity will be limited, with the main reason being that it is not actively pushed within the App Store. The main goal seems to be promoting the cool apps on the iPhone to make the device more attractive.

The above mentioned Apple’s App Store Picks promotion, which had a clear positive influence on application popularity, was embedded in iTunes, where Apps for Everything is not. When we compare the impact on rankings for these Apps for Everything apps with the impact we saw previously with the App Store Picks, we can clearly see that the influence on rankings while being featured in iTunes is larger than it is for Apple’s website.

Developers that are trying to join one of the app promotions from Apple: go for the ones that are embedded in the iTunes store, the impact will be largest there.

Tags: apple, apps for everything
Posted in Apple App Store for iPhone | 7 Comments »

Recap of this week’s app store news

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

For developers, it is now possible to target applications per country and operator in the Android Market.
The LG Application Store was launched three months ago, it now contains 1,295 applications, of which over 90% paid content.
Acer is launching its first Android phone this year, with the new 1.6 version of the Android OS. The manufacturer is also releasing an Android based netbook.
The Brazilian operator TIM announced it will be launching an app store beginning next year, in cooperation with Qualcomm.
In-app purchase is now also available for free applications in the Apple App Store, which offer huge potential for developers that want to up-sell their apps.

Posted in Weekly news recap | No Comments »

In-app purchase now for free Apple App Store apps

Friday, October 16th, 2009

In the Apple App Store it was already possible to offer in-app purchases to users of paid applications. This offered many potential new ways for developers to monetize their applications. Instead of only being able to charge a one-off fee , developers can offer subscriptions, new application content, virtual goods and much more in their paid apps.

Apple initially limited in-app purchase to paid applications, so developers with free apps still had to launch a paid version before being able to bill from the application itself. This now changed. Apple announced that in-app purchase is also available for free applications:

This is huge for developers wanting to upsell their apps. Because of the lower initial price point (free), many more customers will download the app, increasing the potential for upselling.

This can have a substantial impact on the proportion of free and paid apps in the Apple App Store and it will also be very interesting to see what the impact on application prices will be. As TechCrunch notes, many developers with free applications that wanted to make use of in-app purchase before, needed to launch a paid version of their app, for which a low price point was often chosen. So will average prices of paid apps go up because lower prices apps will go for free and enable in-app purchase? We will report on that soon.

Tags: Apple App Store for iPhone, in-app purchase
Posted in Apple App Store for iPhone | 1 Comment »

Qualcomm and TIM to launch an App Store in Brazil

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Qualcomm and TIM Brazil just announced that TIM Brazil will launch their Qualcomm powered application store in the first quarter next year, running on its full range of handsets. Hence it will be available to its 40 million subscribers in Brazil. There are no details yet on revenue share, but we expect TIM to announce that in the near future.

The store is powered by Qualcomm’s Plaza Retail solution, which is “a flexible and scalable mobile retail solution that enables application retailers to create and manage rich, highly personalized shopping experience across diverse platforms, devices and networks”. It includes a multi-platform client, web, or mobile web (WAP) storefront. Plaza Retail is capable of supporting JAVA, Brew, Flash and Android, with Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm and LiMo to be added in the future. We have added the TIM App Store to our App Store Overview.

Tags: Qualcomm, TIM Brazil
Posted in TIM App Store | No Comments »

Acer goes Android

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Acer just announced its first Android phone, the Acer Liquid. The launch date is not mentioned yet, but is expected to be in November.

The Acer Liquid will run the new 1.6 version of the Android OS. It is not confirmed yet if the Android Market will be present on the phone, though it would be very likely. Acer previously announced it would be launching an own app store this year. It is not yet clear whether this will be based on the Android Market.

An updated Android Market will be present in the 1.6 Android OS. As reported earlier, the most important new features of this Android Market are clear separated free and paid application rankings and screenshots of apps. The separated free and paid rankings will make it easier for a developer with paid applications to get visibility in the most popular rankings.

See a demo of the new Android Market below:

Acer is putting a lot of effort into Android: their first netbook running on Android is now also on pre-sale.

Tags: Acer, android, Android Market
Posted in Android Market | 1 Comment »

LG Application Store after 3 months

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

The LG application was launched in July in Singapore and Australia. An overview of the store after 3 months:

Countries
The store is now live in 15 countries.

Content
The store contains 1,295 applications, of which over 90% is paid. The categories with the most content items are Games, Education and Utilities. See an overview of the applications per category below:

LG Application Store content

The store supports Windows Mobile applications for two LG phones, the GM730 and KS20. Applications can be downloaded via the PC or directly to the phone via the LG Application Store mobile website.

GM730

KS20. Free applications need to be downloaded to the PC first, and installed on the phone via ActiveSync.

Billing
Billing is done via credit card. The supported cards at this moment are Visa, Mastercard and Amex.

Revenue share
Developers receive 80% revenue share.

Developers that want to publish applications in the LG Application Store can go here.

Tags: LG Application Store
Posted in LG Application Store | 3 Comments »

Android Market gets operator targeting

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Developers that publish applications in Google Android Market can target their apps to specific countries. This allows developers with applications relevant for a local audience to make apps available to a selection of countries. Now the Android Market also has operator targeting:

Publish apps in Android Market

So next to countries, developers can now also aim at specific operator audiences to publish their applications to. An example of a suitable application is T-Mobile My Account, which has been in the US top rankings for several months.

As a result, the content of the Android Market can now differ per operator. Until now, there has been limited variation in the top listings of Android Market per country. The amount of applications that are relevant only to a specific operator’s subscribers base are limited and for now, we do not expect this to have a large influence on the rankings in Android Market. Operator targeting seems mainly useful for operators that offer Android phones and want to bring their own Android applications to their subscriber base.

Tags: Android Market, operator targeting
Posted in Android Market | 1 Comment »