Archive for the ‘Apple App Store’ Category

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New Apple App Store Category ‘explicit’?

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

In the past few days a lot of buzz went around about the removal of more or less explicit sexual content apps from the Apple App Store. Apps like Wooble iBoobs, were removed from the store while other explicit apps like the Playboy app remained. In total 5,000 apps, are said to be pulled away. From our data we saw a decrease over the weekend of 2,000 apps. This most likely is the first weekly decline since the store launched.

Now developers that are trying to add new apps through iTunesConnect, can select a new category (screenshot) called ‘explicit’, however the category doesn’t show up in the actual App Store yet. We’ll keep you posted if Apple will launch this category anytime soon.

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Posted in Apple App Store | No Comments »

Apple To Add 13 New Countries To App Store

Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Apple App Store Tops 130,000 Applications Available

Apple has begun requesting developers to agree to new terms for publishing applications. These new terms are a result of the addition of new countries to Apple’s App Store. Right now developers can publish applications in 77 countries, the new terms accommodate for 13 more. These countries are:

  • Armenia
  • Botswana
  • Bulgaria
  • Jordan
  • Kenya
  • Macedonia
  • Madagascar
  • Mali
  • Mauritius
  • Niger
  • Senegal
  • Tunisia
  • Uganda

This brings the total number of countries where the Apple App Store is available to 90. It is not known when Apple will make the App Store available to consumers in these countries, but it is likely that it will happen soon.

Posted in Apple App Store | No Comments »

iPad: The App Store And The iBooks Store

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Steve Jobs announced the iPad at his keynote a few hours ago. Aside from all the features of the device, he talked about the App Store and the iBooks app/Store as well. The iPad will be able to run (almost) all applications currently available in the App Store for the iPhone/iPod Touch. These applications will either be resized to fit the screen or developers can optimize the application for the larger screen of the iPad. These applications can be downloaded using the App Store and new applications that have been designed just for the iPad will be highlighted.

The App Store On The iPad

The App Store On The iPad

Besides the App Store itself, the iBooks app will be available for download in the App Store allowing the user to read and buy books. Books will be published in the ePub format, allowing publishers to embed multimedia directly into books. However, the iBooks app is not yet available in any other country than the US: “iBooks available in the U.S. only.”

The iBooks App On The iPad

The iBooks App On The iPad

There is no information yet on the revenue share of the books sold through the iBooks app. We will update this post when we know more.

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Posted in Apple App Store | 1 Comment »

Distimo Report – December 2009

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
It is our pleasure to release our monthly Distimo Report, based on December 2009 data. Distimo Report Logo
This report covers five application stores: Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

This month’s most important findings are:

  • In Google Android Market, 65% of the publishers are located in the United States, 12% in the United Kingdom, 20% in Europe and 3% in Japan.
  • Publishers located in Europe price their applications highest with an average of $4.42, which is 49% higher than publishers located in the United States.
  • Applications in Apple App Store, Google Android Market and Nokia Ovi Store are priced at around $3.50. Windows Marketplace for Mobile and BlackBerry App World are more expensive, averaging $6.99 and $8.26 respectively.
  • Because of Microsoft’s market validation guidelines and additional fees for distributing applications in more than one country, the number of applications available in some countries is only a small percentage (<5%) of applications available worldwide.

You can download the report here.

This report was covered on TechCrunch here.

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Posted in Android Market, Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, Distimo Report, Nokia Ovi Store, Windows Marketplace | 1 Comment »

Apple App Store Tops 130,000 Applications Available

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
Apple App Store Tops 130,000 Applications Available

Apple App Store Tops 130,000 Applications Available

As of today, the Apple App Store contains well over 130,00 applications: 131,562 to be exact. The store keeps growing at a rapid pace; on January 5th, Apple announced that they reached the milestone of three billion downloads. Just over 3 months ago, the store contained 85,000 applications.

Hence the amount of applications added in the past three months amounts to about 500 a day. When comparing these number with the numbers of one week ago, we can see that the Business category grew fastest, with 763 applications added in just one week. The category with the largest percentage of applications added since last week is Books, which grew 4.81%.

We have updated appstores.info with this information.

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Posted in Apple App Store | 2 Comments »

Bing Among 100 Highest Ranked Apps Worldwide In Apple App Store

Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Bing for iPhone

Bing for iPhone

Yesterday, Microsoft launched an iPhone version of its Bing search engine in the Apple App Store. Bing allows users to search the web or maps by voice, and it is free. After only one day in the App Store, Bing is now ranked as one of the 100 Top Overall most downloaded iPhone applications in 47 out of 77 Apple App Store countries. Among these countries are the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, and more.

Bing is published in the Reference category. A comparable application in this category is the Google Mobile App, which is now ranked below Bing. Of all free Reference applications, Bing is now one of the top 10 most downloaded apps in 72 out of 77 countries. It is ranked number 1 in 8 countries, with among those the United States, Italy and The Netherlands.

The Apple App Store is not the only store that offers Bing right now. Microsoft also published their new search app to GetJar and of course Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Bing definitely has made a successful start in the Apple App Store, and it will be interesting to see how popular it will remain over time. We will keep tracking it in all stores and post an update soon.

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Apple’s Black Friday Featured Apps

Monday, November 30th, 2009

To celebrate Black Friday, Apple put up a new section titled “App Store Essentials – Black Friday”. As we monitor all apps worldwide, we are able to track the influence of this promotion on the rankings of the featured applications.

Below you can find the rankings of these apps in the category they were published in:

Black Friday Rankings

Santa’s List – Christmas Gift Organizer entered the Productivity Top 100 because of the promotion, as well as Pocket Price (Lifestyle) and TheFind (Lifestyle), all achieving a ranking of 33 or better. Christmas Gifts List even entered the Overall Top 100 because of the promotion.

Being one of the apps in these promotional places greatly influences rankings and hence downloads, as we have seen before with “Apps for Everything” and “App Store Picks“. We will keep you posted on other promotional events by Apple.

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Posted in Apple App Store | 1 Comment »

AppJam Presentation Wrapup and Slides

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

AppJam

Last Monday, we went to AppJam in London, a European focused meet-up to share knowledge and learn more about developments from the major app stores. I was keynote speaker at the event and gave a presentation about application store stats, which you can find embedded below. The major findings in this presentation were:

  • Apple App Store leads the pack in terms of amount of applications, having about a 100,000 applications available, compared to Android Market (14,000) and BlackBerry App World (3,300).
  • Increase of amount of applications on Android Market and BlackBerry App World however will be driven by the amount of devices coming available with these stores pre-installed, and additional country support.
  • Android Market has significant more free applications available, which may be caused by Google’s less strict approval process and the necessity to use Google Checkout for payments
  • BlackBerry applications are about 3 times as expensive as Android’s and Apple’s. Cross-store publishers also charge higher prices for their apps on App World.
  • Apple’s popularity ranking system favours cheap applications, however, most revenue is made by the more expensive applications, in spite of having less downloads than the cheap applications. The average price for the most popular applications was $2,58 in October, and $10.30 for the most grossing applications.
  • When it comes to in-app purchasing, Games are most succesful at making revenue. Read more about this on TechCrunch.
  • Succesful apps get more exposure on Android and App World than on Apple App Store. The average amount of days in the top 100 for the Apple App Store was only 14, while for Android and BlackBerry this was 26 and 20 respectively (October).

I would like to thank the organizers, Laurence and Tania, for the great event! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in mobile apps!

If you have any questions, please contact .

Distimo App Jam Presentation

View more documents from distimo.

Posted in Android Market, Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World | No Comments »

Most Popular Apps In The Chinese App Store

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

At the end of October, the Apple App Store was officially launched in China with the operator Unicom selling the first iPhones. The App Store was however already accessible in China at the end of August, but lacking the Games category. After three weeks of iPhone sales in China, we decided to make an overview of the most popular content.

These are the 20 most popular paid applications, since the launch of the iPhone in China:

Most popular paid apps in Chinese App Store since iPhone launch

Most popular paid apps in Chinese App Store since iPhone launch

A few takes from this:

  • Games are now supported in the Chinese Apple App Store
  • Prices for paid content are in USD
  • From the top 20, half of the applications are specifically aimed at Chinese users
  • 9 out of 20 top applications are Games, compared to 11 out of 20 for the US App Store (see for more details on the US app store our latest report).

These are the 20 most popular free applications, since the launch of the iPhone in China:

Most popular free apps in Chinese App Store since iPhone launch

Compared to the most popular paid apps, a few things catch our attention:

  • 13 out of 20 top titles are Games
  • 8 of the top 20 applications are specifically aimed at Chinese users

As the Wall Street Journal reports, there are big opportunities for developers in the Chinese App Store. Especially if the billing methods, that are now limited to credit card improve, because credit cards are not common for Chinese consumers yet.

We will keep tracking the applications in the Apple App Store in China and will report whether it will continue to offer a large proportion of local content.

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Posted in Apple App Store | 1 Comment »

Distimo Report October 2009: In-App Purchasing And Cross-Store Developers

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Every month we publish a report highlighting trends in the different mobile app stores. Distimo Report for October 2009 is now available.

The report covers the Apple App Store, Google Android Market and RIM’s BlackBerry App World.

You can download the free report here.

New and noteworthy:

  1. Developers publishing applications in multiple application stores price their applications lowest on Apple’s App Store.
  2. The same application titles are priced significantly higher on BlackBerry App World and Google Android Market than on the Apple App Store.
  3. On the Apple App Store, Games and Social Networking applications have benefited most from in-app purchasing for free applications.
  4. BlackBerry App World prices have been increasing since mid-October, from $5.11 to $5.60 (+9.6%), while pricing on the Apple App Store and Google Android Market have remained fairly stable.
Developpublishing applications in multiple application stores price their applications lowest on Apple’s App Store.
The same application titles are priced significantly higher on BlackBerry App World and Google Android Market than on the Apple
App Store.
On the Apple App Store, Games and Social Networking applications have benefited most from in-app purchasing for free applications.
BlackBerry App World prices have been increasing since mid-October, from $5.11 to $5.60 (+9.6%), while pricing on the Apple App
Store and Google Android Market have remained fairly stable

The report was covered by TechCrunch here.

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Posted in Android Market, Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, Distimo Report | 7 Comments »

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