It is our pleasure to release our latest Distimo Publication.
This publication covers the Apple App Store for iPhone for May 2011. Asian countries become increasingly important in terms of number of downloads (see world map). Therefore, this month we focus on insights in market trends that are relevant for developers who want to grow their business in Asia. This report includes the following countries in Asia: China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Download Volumes Over The World
The major findings are:
- The download volume in Asian countries grew significantly in the past six months in the Apple App Store for iPhone. While other (Western) countries saw a decrease in download volume during the same time frame. China recently became the second largest market after the United States.
- The download volume in South Korea is remarkably high despite the relative small size of the country’s population. Moreover, because the Games category is absent in the Apple App Store for iPhone in South Korea, all downloads are allocated to non-Games, while in other countries the Games category is without exception, the largest. This makes South Korea an especially interesting country for publishers and developers in the non-Games categories.
- The download volumes in Asia increased in general, however, the proportion of paid downloads and the overall revenue still lag behind that of the United States and Europe. Moreover, while in-app purchases became an important monetization method over the last year in many countries, it has not yet in Asia. Thus, developers have to look for other ways of monetization such as advertising.
- A comparison of the most popular categories between the United States and Asia revealed that there are no significant differences between content preferences. Hence, iPhone developers could offer the same type of applications in both Asia and the United States.
- The majority of the most popular iPhone applications in Asia is only popular in Asia, but in some Asian countries worldwide popular applications prevail. Examples of regional popular only content are KungFu Food-Panda, and Birzzle. In general, localization appears to be key to becoming popular especially when considering countries like China, South Korea, and Japan. In countries like India and Indonesia, localization appears to be less important.
You can now download this publication.
The press kit including all image files is also available.
Gert Jan Spriensma