Google Android Market Tops 400,000 Applications

Posted on by Tiuri van Agten

Google Android Market gave itself a nice new year’s present last weekend. The total number of active applications worldwide in the Android Market reached the 400,000 milestone. Android Market has topped the 200K and 300K available apps milestones in April and August 2011 respectively.
The main contributors to reach this milestone are free applications. Roughly, 2/3 of the available applications are free in Android Market. The percentage of free applications has steadily grown month over month from 60% in April 2011 to 68% free content at the end of 2011. One of the reason behind this increase in free content is the success of the freemium business model, which is explained in more detail in our annual overview.

Google Android Market needed two more months in order to reach this landmark compared to the Apple App Store for iPhone, which hit the 400K available apps in June 2011. Interesting to see is that Android Market has taken 31 months to reach the 200,000 milestone, while Apple only needed 22 months to do this for iPhone apps. However, Android Market needed only four more months to pass the 300.000 milestone, while the App Store for iPhone needed eight more months after Apple hits the 200,000 milestone. Moreover, the gap between the 300K and 400K milestone is also smaller for the Android Market than for the Apple App Store for iPhone, 4 and 7 months respectively.


In addition, Google Android Market has nearly passed a second milestone as well. Android Market has almost more than 100K publishers active in its application store. In the Android Market, each developer publishes 4.1 applications on average, while  developers published nearly five apps on average a year ago.

The milestone  reached by Google Android Market relates to applications that are currently active in the store.  Many applications have been removed by Google or developers, due to infringement of copyright for example.

Tiuri van Agten

Top 10 Most Viewed Distimo Data Publications – 2011

Posted on by Vincent Hoogsteder

If you are a frequent visitor, you know that this blog is our standard outlet to report lastest findings on the apps market. We try to dig into our data and extract the most relevant trends at any given time, communicated either via our monthly publications or as blog posts.

Since we are a numbers company, we became curious what you readers have found the most interesting content of this year that was published here.

So here it goes, the top 10 most viewed posts and a short snippet of the highlighted market findings:

1. In-depth view on download volumes in the Google Android Market (May 2011)
The Android Market proved to be a challenging environment for developers to monetize using the one-off model. Until May 2011, 80% of all paid applications that were available at the time had been downloaded less than 100 times in the Google Android Market worldwide.

2. Quora answering series: download volume needed to hit the top charts (December 2011)
A very often heard question among developers; what do I need to do to get in the top X? Based on our understanding of the ranking algorithms and transactional data, we highlighted the download volume that you need in the top 10 largest countries, to get a certain ranking position.

3. The battle for the most content and the emerging tablet market (April 2011)
This year we have witnessed a fierce race among the leading app stores for the largest number of available apps. More apps mean more choice for the consumer, which is crucial in this now content-driven market.

4. App distribution becomes a global game: shift of power & impact for developers (June 2011)
The Western world is no longer dominating content consumption on smartphones. The app download volumes in Asian countries have shown a dramatic growth during the first half of the year, which later would continue to keep up in the rest of 2011.

5. Mobile gaming trends: popularity, pricing and monetization (July 2011)
Since the launch of the first app stores, games have driven a very substantial proportion of downloads. Games as a category have taken the lead in demonstrating the potential success of new possible monetization models such as in-app purchases and virtual currencies.

6. Full year 2011 publication (December 2011)
The obvious moment to look back on the most important trends of this year. In-app purchasing has driven a very large part of store revenues, where Google is demonstrating even a bigger uptake than Apple proportion wise. Asia demonstrates huge potential for developers, but in-store monetization still needs a lift.

7. Insights into Apple’s ecosystem: comparing Mac, iPad and iPhone (March 2011)
Apple was the first in the market to bring the app store model across its full device range, covering phone, tablet and the desktop. The Mac App Store demonstrated fast rise of revenue generation possibilities using mainly the one-off paid model.

8. What words (not) to use in your application name (May 2011)
Application names are important traffic drivers, since they affect the search results within app stores. This post provides an overview of the 25 most used words by developers and also highlights that many developers tried to ride on the Angry Birds wave by using these words in their application names.

9. Presentation from Mobile World Congress 2010: mobile app stores state of play (February 2010)
This is a special one for us, since it is one of the first presentations we gave back in early 2010 on market trends. It’s an interesting exercise to look back at these ‘old’ market findings and compare this with where we are today.

10. Presentation from Verizon Developer Conference: Pricing for success (September 2011)
This year we have seen major shifts in new monetization strategies that have become the key revenue driver for mobile content. Also channel fragmentation has brought the app store model beyond mobile, which brings a whole new set of opportunities as well as challenges in discovering what works and what does not for developers.

Going back through these market trends of this year emphasizes again how incredibly fast this market is changing. We absolutely can’t wait to discover what’s next together with developers, app store owners, carriers, and anyone that plays a role in mobile content.

Happy New Year!

Team Distimo

Vincent Hoogsteder

App Downloads More Than Tripled On Christmas Day

Posted on by Tiuri van Agten

The download volume of apps in the Apple App Store (United States) saw a dramatic increase this Christmas weekend. The download volume on Christmas Day increased by 230% compared to December’s daily average. On the 26th of December this was a 120% increase.

These calculations are based on transactional data gathered via Distimo Monitor, which represents 25% of total downloads in the Apple App Store US.

Most popular apps this Christmas in the United States? Facebook Messenger ranked first on the list of popular free apps in the Apple App Store for iPhone. The most popular paid app was Words With Friends.

Tiuri van Agten

Distimo Releases Full Year 2011 Publication

Posted on by Hendrik Koekkoek

It is our pleasure to release our latest Distimo Publication.

This report will give an overview of the most important developments in the mobile app stores in 2011. How did the store sizes develop over the last year? Which store generates most revenue nowadays? What are the most downloaded apps of 2011? These questions will be answered in Distimo’s yearly publication. All data covers the stores during the period January – November 2011 in the United States, unless otherwise noted.

The key findings from this report are:

  • Both the Apple App Store for iPad and the Apple App Store for iPhone still beat the Google Android Market in terms of the total revenue generated by the 200 highest grossing apps. The Apple App store for iPhone generates about four times the revenue that is generated in the Google Android Market.Total revenue generated in the app stores
  • 2011 was the year where in-app purchases and the freemium business model became one of the most important monetization strategies for developers. Half of the revenue of the 200 top grossing apps in the Apple App Store for iPhone is now generated by freemium apps. This proportion is even higher in the Google Android Market where 65% of the revenue from the top grossing apps is generated by freemium apps.
  • The number of downloads in the Apple App Store for iPhone in China increased drastically during 2011. Comparing the number of Apple App Store downloads in the US with the number of Apple App Store downloads in China, we see that China now generates 30% of the total downloads of these two countries in the Apple App Store for iPhone. The number of downloads generated in the Apple App Store for iPad in China are even closer to those generated in the US: China generates 44% of the iPad downloads of these two countries.
  • A dip can be observed in the number of downloads generated in the respective  Apple App Stores just prior to the release of a new Apple device, e.g. iPhone or iPad. The number of iPad downloads was at a yearly low in February just before the launch of the new iPad, but they immediately increased again in March. The same happened with the launch of the latest iPhone in October.
  • Nearly all of the app stores more than doubled their number of available apps in 2011. Windows Phone 7 Marketplace showed the largest relative growth of all stores with more than 400% year-on-year growth. Combined, the seven major app stores now offer more than one million apps.
  • The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is now the fourth largest app store when looking at the total number of available games, having surpassed both the Nokia Ovi Store and BlackBerry App World. The Amazon Appstore – larger than both the Nokia Ovi Store and BlackBerry App World as well in terms of available games – is now the fifth largest app store for games.

You can now download this publication.

The press kit including all image files is also available.

Aside from this free publication, our annual paid report for 2011 is available for purchase for North America, Europe and Asia now as well.

Hendrik Koekkoek

The Mac App Store: The Developer of Growl Shares His Experience

Posted on by Tiuri van Agten

Interview with Christopher Forsythe, CEO at The Growl Project

Since the release of the Apple Mac App Store in January 2011, the store’s top charts have mainly been dominated by Apple’s own apps, such as Pages and Mac OS X Lion. This hegemony ended in October, with the introduction of Growl in the Mac Store. Within hours after its release, Growl reached the first place in the Mac Store’s Top Overall list for paid content in more than 50 countries including the US. As this is pretty unique for an application developer, we decided to get in touch with Growl’s CEO Christopher Forsythe, to get his view on the Apple Mac App Store.

Growl is an open source notification system for OS X. “The main goal of Growl”, explained Forsythe, “is to give users control over their notifications, and to provide developers with an easy to use notification system without spending a lot of time on that sort things”. (growl.info)

According to Forsythe, bringing Growl to the Apple Mac App Store was the right choice at the right moment. “We didn’t want to be the last people on the bus”, explained Forsythe. Moreover, the team experienced a growing issue. “Application developers were installing Growl without telling their customers. The people who unfortunately experienced this did not know what Growl is”. Entering the Apple Mac Apple Store should solve this problem.

Growl’s submission process to the Mac App Store went smooth, but what would the right price be? “Overall we wanted to provide Growl for purchase, but to price it so that it would be reasonable for everyone” clarified Forsythe. Therefore, Forsythe considered a price ranging from $0.99 to $9.99. After consulting different people with different backgrounds, the price for Growl was set to $1.99.

Despite the smooth submission process, Forsythe sees an opportunity for Apple to improve the relationship with its developers:  “the biggest thing that could change for us is for Apple to provide some way for people to purchase applications in the app store for volume licensing”.  He continues: “Software vendors who want to sell software to organizations that have different requirements than people who are home users need to consider other options than the app store for volume licensing currently. “ This would provide better ways to monetize apps, especially for The Growl Project, which developed a variety of applications.  Besides Growl’s one-off fees, revenue sharing program Linkshare is used as another method of monetization. Moreover, the Growl Team is considering to start a online store with t shirts and other related things.

Overall, Forsythe’s experience about Apple Mac App Store has been positive and he would recommend trying out the Mac Store to other developers. “Having come from a more traditional distribution route, I’d say that the ease with which the App Store provides many positives outweighs any temporary negatives that will arise”.

Tiuri van Agten

Quora Answering Series: Download Volume Needed To Hit The Top Charts

Posted on by Gert Jan Spriensma

We noticed that many developers turn to Quora to validate mobile business plans, estimate market sizes or plan promotions more efficiently. At Distimo we gather a lot of data that is relevant to those developers. Therefore we decided to start tracking Quora and answer those questions for which we have data that we can share. This post is the first in the series and details what number of downloads an application needs to hit the top charts on a typical day.

We hope to answer the following questions on Quora:

Of course the number of downloads required to enter the top overall 10, 25 or 50 differs per country. However, there are also differences per day. Therefore in this post we will start with data from the 10 largest iPhone countries in terms of free downloads and conclude with the distribution of downloads per weekday. Please note that all numbers in this post are based on November 2011 data.

The 10 largest countries in terms of download volume among the top 300 most popular free applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone are; Australia, Canada, China, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, United Kingdom and United States. Those are represented in the worldmap below. When hovering over one of those countries, the average daily volume you would need to enter the top 10, 25 and 50 in that country will appear below the world-map. Moreover, the gradient in the worldmap indicates the relative volume in the top 300 free, compared to the other countries.

Of all downloads in the top 300 most popular free applications in a typical week, we see that aggregated over the 10 countries the daily proportions are as follows; Monday (14%), Tuesday (13%), Wednesday (13%), Thursday (13%), Friday (14%), Saturday (16%), Sunday (17%). Hence to get into the top requires less downloads on a weekday compared to the weekend days.

This was our first post in this series. Please let us know (@distimo / @gert_jan) if there are other interesting (unanswered) questions on Quora that could be answered with our data.

Gert Jan Spriensma

App Store Rewind 2011, is Your App Listed?

Posted on by Tijmen Ruizendaal

Apple iTunes App Store Rewind 2011Last Friday Apple released its App Store Rewind for 2011, where the most downloaded content of this year is highlighted. Next to music, movies and TV shows, Rewind 2011 covers Apple App Store for iPhone, Apple App Store for iPad and Mac App Store.

Some noteworthy findings

It’s interesting to see that 77 of the 100 apps in Top Grossing in the US are games. Australia has the most games (80) among the Top Grossing. In Korea, there are only 23 games among all Top Grossing apps, however, this is largely due to the fact that Korea only has games available in the App Store since November 2011.

Whatsapp Messenger (number one app in 9 countries) is the best paid app worldwide, while Facebook (number one app in 12 countries) is the best free app worldwide. Facebook however is not listed in China. Below a table highlighting the Top Paid, Top Free and Top Grossing apps in the US with the number of countries that app is listed in for App Store Rewind 2011.

Top Sellers US, Free Top Sellers US, Paid Top Sellers US, Gross
App Countries App Countries App Countries
Facebook 19/20 Angry Birds 19/20 Tap Zoo 19/20
Pandora Radio 1/20 Fruit Ninja 19/20 Angry Birds 19/20
Word With Friends Free 5/20 Angry Birds Seasons 19/20 Zombie Farm 19/20
Angry Birds Free 17/20 Cut the Rope 19/20 Tap Pet Hotel 19/20
Skype 19/20 Tiny Wings 18/20 Poker by Zynga 18/20
Netflix 2/20 Angry Birds Rio 19/20 Smurfs’ Village 19/20
Angry Birds Rio Free 18/20 Words With Friends 4/20 Texas Poker 19/20
Groupon 6/20 Camera+ 19/20 Haypi kingdom 18/20
Gruit Ninja Lite 17/20 Doodle Jump 18/20 Infinity Blade 19/20
Twitter 17/20 Plants vs. Zombies 18/20 MotionX GPS Drive 19/20

Number of Countries: 17/20 means the app is listed in 17 countries of the 20 countries we used for this table.

Find out where your App is listed in App Store Rewind 2011

Distimo Monitor, our free App Store Analytics tool for app developers, displays entries in App Store Rewind 2011 as a Featured Event. Instead of searching for your app in all countries, Distimo Monitor can do that for you. Below a screenshot of an App Store Rewind 2011 featured event in Monitor:

iTunes Rewind Distimo Monitor

To see where your apps are listed in the App Store Rewind 2011 and track the influence in your download figures, head over to Distimo Monitor.

Tijmen Ruizendaal

Distimo Featured Reports November At Only €399

Posted on by Gert Jan Spriensma

Together with our monthly publications, Distimo proudly presents each month three Paid Featured Reports. These reports offer deep insights into all major applications stores in North America, Europe and Asia. A single report can be purchased for the entry-level price of €399,-, with combinations of reports being discounted up to 20%.

Each Featured Report provide aggregated data of one particular region (Europe, Asia or North America) and give a clear overview of the applications and publishers that are (locally) successful in each store and region. Moreover, market trends in terms of pricing and business models are presented. Lastly, a closer look is taken on download volumes and revenues in the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad specifically. This months’ edition, in line with the monthly publications, also includes download- and revenue data from the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace.

The reports consist of a PDF presentation with in-depth analyses and an Excel file that contains all raw data. More details about the reports can be found on our website.

Gert Jan Spriensma

Local Currency Boost Download Volumes in Chinese Apple App Store

Posted on by Tiuri van Agten

After the introduction of the official Chinese currency, the Yuan (CNY), in the Apple App Store, the download volumes in the Apple App Store China have grown significantly. The download volume of paid applications in the Chinese top 100 has almost doubled after the 18th of November, the day Apple introduced the Yuan. The growth rates in this top 100 vary between 40% and 80% over the last week compared to two weeks ago.

Apple announced to support payments with the Chinese Yuan in the Apple App Store one week ago. We expected an increase in the download volume of paid applications in China because Chinese citizens were now able to pay content with local bankcards instead of using a credit card. Now, our first data analyses support this thought.

China is one of the largest emerging markets for mobile applications. Apparently, adding the Yuan by Apple was a smart move. Paid download volumes remain small in China compared to the United States. The ability to pay in the local currency would support paid downloads in China, which offers new opportunities for developers.

Tiuri van Agten

Windows Phone 7 Marketplace: One Year Later

Posted on by Tiuri van Agten

It is our pleasure to release our latest Distimo Publication.

The latest Distimo monthly report is a recap of one year Windows Phone 7 Marketplace and covers the story of an emerging application store and the behavior of developers in the store.

The key findings from this report are:

  • Paid applications in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace have grown continuous with almost 1300 new paid applications every month. Free applications have increased on average by 1650 new free applications month-over-month.

  • The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace in the United States has 101k free downloads and 20k paid downloads per day among the top 300 most downloaded applications. Here, the download volume of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is 39 times smaller relative to the download volume of the Apple App Store for iPhone in the top 300 most popular applications.
  • The number of publishers has consistently grown since the launch of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace with 700 new publishers per month.
  • Nearly 50% of all applications are available in the 17 countries in which the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace was originally accessible. One-third of all applications are available in all 35 countries.
  • Developers find it easier to distribute paid content globally instead of free content. Free content is more localized in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace.
  • The most popular category in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is Games. Other popular categories are Tools & Productivity, Entertainment and Travel & Navigation.

You can download this publication.

The press kit including all image files is also available.

Tiuri van Agten