What’s next: What’s the Word? $50,000 estimated daily revenue US on iOS

Posted on by Anne Hezemans

Success stories come and go. After the Apple App Store hits Draw Something, Ruzzle it appears a new application is climbing the top ranks. ‘What’s the Word?’ is a word guessing game on iOS. It has become a very popular game in the US very recently. It is ranked number one for the last couple of days in App Store’s top overall free in the US.

In our new App Analytics feature, weekly leaderboards, you can see it is ranked number one in top overall free in the US last week as well. This means that the application generated most downloads of all apps in week 5 on Apple App Store for iPhone in the US only.

In terms of revenue you can see the app showed the first signs of pickup in the US mid-January. In the first weeks of January the revenue in the US slowly increased and after a new version release on January 25 the revenue almost doubled to around $50,000 estimated daily revenue. Below our estimated daily revenue in the US using Distimo AppIQ data:

Will this game stick on the number one position in the next weeks or even months? We will see in due time. And you can see this as well. Distimo AppIQ allows you to track ranks, estimated downloads and revenues for any app, in every country worldwide. Learn more about AppIQ at  www.distimo.com/app-analytics/appiq

Anne Hezemans

GSMA Announces Nominees Global Mobile Awards

Posted on by Vincent Hoogsteder

The GSMA today announced nominees for the 18th annual Global Mobile Awards. In a record breaking year for entries, there are more than 158 nominees and the awards with the winners to be announced at the Mobile World Congress at 14.30hrs (local time) on Tuesday 26th February 2013, in Barcelona, Spain.

Distimo is partnering with the GSMA for the awards: market data for the ‘Best Mobile App for Consumers’ and ‘Best Mobile App for Enterprise’ categories was provided by Distimo AppIQ.

The full list with all nominees is available on globalmobileawards.com/nominees-2013/ Congratulations to all developers who got nominated and best of luck during the award ceremony!

Vincent Hoogsteder

Meet Distimo in February @ Apps World, Winter Nights, Casual Connect & MWC

Posted on by Remco van den Elzen

February is a great month for events, and Distimo will be attending quite a few of them:

At Winter Nights our colleague David Maret will be giving two sessions that will be held at the following times:

Session I: 14:20 a 14:30 till 15:20
Session II: 17:20 a 17:30 till 18:20

David’s presentation is directed towards Marketing & Product owners and developers who want to learn more about the market and their competitors. The presentation will cover:

- App Market overview
- Category insights (Revs)
- Top Apps (Game focussed i.e In App vs One off revenues)
- Free to Paid ratios
- Top apps at this moment (Q4 / January data)
- Region information (Revs & Downs)
- Real demo of AppIQ (Analytics for specific requests from the audience) and leaderboard insights (AppIQ)

We are looking forward to talking to developers and sharing the insights that we have. If you would like to meet up, please contact us!

Remco van den Elzen

Publication: The Impact of Price Changes

Posted on by Tiuri van Agten

We’re please to share our first monthly publication of 2013. This month’s publication focuses on the effect of price changes on download volumes and revenue in the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad. Many developers discount their apps from time to time, with some of them being very successful. We take a look at our data to learn from their strategies. Does it really pay off to discount your app, and to what extent if so?

Sizes of Price Events

The majority of price changes are within a $1.00 to $3.00 range. The largest price changes are in the Apple App Store for iPad, twenty percent of all price events involved a change larger than $4.00 in this store.

The Effect on Downloads

The effect of a price drop is more intensive in the Apple App Store for iPhone than it is in the Apple App Store for iPad. On average, cumulative downloads grow by 1665% five days after the price drop in the Apple App Store for iPhone, while the growth is 871% on the iPad. However, the effect on downloads of a lower price ends, when the price increases again. Download volumes in the Apple App Store for iPhone drop by -46%, aggregated over five days after a price raise. In the Apple App Store of iPad, the drop in downloads is somewhat higher, -57%.

 

The Effect on Revenue

The effect of a price drop on revenue is significant and is already visible within three days after a price drop. This effect is more intense for application on the iPhone than it is for iPad applications. Moreover, the effect on revenue becomes larger in the long run in both the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad. Revenue from one-off fees and in-app purchases are both contributors to this increase in revenue in the long run.

 

Price Changes most effective on the iPhone

The price elasticity on revenue in Apple App Store for iPhone is the lowest, which means that revenue reacts most heavily on any price change in this store. Here, a 1% price drop leads to a 1.2% revenue increase within five days. The price elasticity in the Apple App Store for iPad is -0.7, which indicates that a 1% price drop causes a 0.7% increase in revenue.

 

Download the Full Report

The full report includes a more detailed analysis about the impact of price events. Please download the full report here.

The press kit including all image files is also available.

Tiuri van Agten

Survey Report: Android And iOS Most Popular Development Platforms, But Developers Looking For Alternatives

Posted on by Hendrik Koekkoek

Market strategy firm Vision Mobile just released their fourth annual survey report “Developer Economics 2013″. For the report, subtitled “Developer Tools: Foundations of the App Economy”. 3,460 developers across 95 countries were surveyed. The report contains interesting insights into developer mindshare, revenue and lead platforms. This report specifically, also focuses on developer tools, incl. ad-networks, back-end as a service, cross-platfrom tools, cross-promotion networks, user analytics, and voice services.

The full report is available free of charge here.

We would like to highlight a few of the findings regarding app distribution in the app stores.

Android continues to lead mobile developer mindshare, with 72% of developers now developing for the platform, a 4 percentage point increase compared to our 2012 survey. iOS shows a 5 percentage point drop, to 56%, in Mindshare, which we attribute mostly to the influx of Asian developers showing a clear preference towards Android. The considerable share of mobile developers intending to adopt Windows Phone (47%) and BB10 (15%) indicate that there is still developer interest in a viable third app ecosystem.

The report also gave some insights into the effect on revenue of developing for multiple platforms. 74% of developers use two or more platforms concurrently. On average mobile developers use 2.6 mobile platforms in our latest research, compared to 2.7 in 2012 and 3.2 in our 2011 research. The Android-iOS duopoly in smartphone sales is gradually creating a concentration of developers around these two platforms: 80% of respondents in our sample develop for Android, iOS or both, making them the baseline in any platform mix. Developers that do not develop for one of these two platforms generate, on average, half the revenue of those developers that do, leaving little doubt as to the concentration of power within these two major ecosystems.

  For more results from the survey, you can download the full report here.

Hendrik Koekkoek

RIM Adjusts Pricing Tiers. Lower Prices For GBP And Euro Zone

Posted on by Hendrik Koekkoek

Yesterday, RIM has announced in a blogpost that they will be introducing new pricing tiers in BlackBerry App World. RIM is rolling the new pricing tiers out in phases, with the first currencies to be affected being the British Pounds (GBP) and Euro.

According to RIM, the reason for the change is that the new tiers better reflect the actual exchange rates. Apple last changed its pricing tiers for this reason on October 25, resulting in a price increase in the Euro zone.

Another reason for RIM to change the tiers is to enable developers to price their apps more competitively. As prices in Euros and GBP are decreasing in BlackBerry App World, it is likely that this is the most important reason for RIM to adjust the tiers. The lowest pricing tier in GBP is now £0.75, down from £1.00. For the Euro zone, the lowest price drops from €0.99 to €0.89. In the Apple App Store, the lowest pricing tiers in these zones are £0.69 and €0.89 respectively. Hence, the change in BlackBerry App World puts the prices more in line with the Apple App Store. The graph below visualizes how the tier change affects the prices (converted to USD).   In Google Play, there are no such things as pricing tiers. Developers can adjust the price and currency of their apps freely in every country.

Pricing apps at the lowest tier is popular practice in the Apple App Store for iPhone. In December, 53% of the paid apps in the US was priced in the lowest tier of $0.99. BlackBerry App World has always been a relatively expensive store. In December, 37% of all available paid apps in this store were priced in the lowest tier. The average price of all available paid apps was 9% higher than in the Apple App Store for iPhone during Q4 2012 in the US.

Hendrik Koekkoek

Download Uptake Of Ruzzle On iOS

Posted on by Vincent Hoogsteder

Ruzzle is a very successful word playing game on iOS and Android. Currently it’s ranked number one top overall free in the US and has been up in the top 10 since the holidays. The app generates well over 100k daily downloads on iOS in the US only and also is approaching the top 10 most revenue generating apps with their in-app purchases.

Why this story is extra interesting? The app showed the first signs of real pickup in the US early December. But is was already available much longer. Ruzzle was released already in early March 2012. Between March and December US downloads were pretty much flatline. Below our estimated daily downloads using Distimo AppIQ data:

Ruzzle Daily iOS Downloads – United States

Ruzzle’s developer, MAG Interactive, is based in Stockholm, Sweden. The app is also available in a wide selection of local languages. One of our previous monthly publications demonstrated the substantial impact this can have on downloads by country. The app uptake in its developer’s home country looks quite different from the US, these are the daily downloads since launch in Sweden:

Ruzzle Daily iOS Downloads – Sweden

At launch the app quickly went up, but has been going down to a much lower stable level after that. In our home country, The Netherlands, the app also quickly won users after launch. It’s volume also decreased, but is still at a much higher level than in Sweden:

Ruzzle Daily iOS Downloads – The Netherlands

So will the US downloads also start following a pattern as in Sweden or The Netherlands? We’ll keep an eye on that. In the meanwhile, Ruzzle seems up for a German adventure as well:

Ruzzle Daily iOS Downloads – Germany

Vincent Hoogsteder

A Very Appy Christmas

Posted on by Gert Jan Spriensma

Every year in the weeks leading up to Christmas developers and publishers make plans to make the most out of the Christmas opportunity. Last year, we reported that downloads tripled on Christmas Day compared to the December 2011 average. A lot of iPhones and iPads were also sold as Christmas presents for 2012 and all those new devices obviously need some cool apps.

Distimo AppIQ data shows us that the 2012 daily download figures in the Apple App Store for iPad and iPhone increased by 87% on Christmas Day compared to the December 2012 average, and moreover, the revenues showed an slightly lower increase of 70%. Given that the iPad downloads and revenues rose by 140% and 83% respectively, the iPad seems to have been a very popular gift.

All publishers aim to be in the top charts to fully capitalize on the most recent group of new potential customers. The 10 iOS applications that have made the most out of it this Christmas on a worldwide level (top 40 countries) in terms of downloads are:

Most Successful iOS Applications On Christmas Day (excluding Apple apps)
Rank App In-App
1 YouTube

Google, Inc
2 Google Maps

Google, Inc
3 ElfYourself by OfficeMax

Magic Mirror LLC
4 Where’s My Holiday?

Disney
5 Skype for iPad

Skype Communications S.a.r.l
6 Subway Surfers

Kiloo
7 Flow Free

Big Duck Games LLC
8 Furby

Hasbro, Inc.
9 Instagram

Burbn, Inc.
10 Emoji & Unicode Icons – Special Symbols For Messages & Email

Jessie Tao

Looking for more country specific stats? View the full leaderboards. For a list of the most successful publishers and applications in 2012 you can have look at our 2012 Year In Review publication.

We could not wait to find out how the market developed during Christmas, and guess you feel the same about your own sales! If you want to know your Christmas sales and have a Distimo account, please login and find out. If you don’t have an account yet, you can als sign up, and we retrieve your download and revenue data even during the iTunes Connect downtime.

Gert Jan Spriensma

Publication: 2012 Year In Review

Posted on by Gert Jan Spriensma

It is our pleasure to release our latest Distimo Publication.

This report will give an overview of the most important developments in the Apple App Store and Google Play in 2012. How did the stores develop over the last year? Which store generates most revenue nowadays? What are the most downloaded apps and what are the most successful publishers in 2012?

Google Play Catching Up?

Looking at the worldwide daily download volumes, the app store opportunity is large. On a typical day in November 2012, the revenues in the Apple App Store are 15M USD, while in Google Play the revenues are just below 3.5M USD in 20 of the largest countries in both app stores. Google Play showed tremendous growth in the past four months, with an aggregated growth in daily revenue of 43% across 20 of the largest countries while the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad grew by 21% in daily revenue in the same period.

More Than 1M Downloads In Three Days

Draw Something, one of the best known apps of 2012, reached 1M users in nine days, and at Distimo we found it is possible to gain 1M users much faster. Naver, one of the most successful Asian publishers, launched five applications at the end of November and all five quickly became the most popular applications in many Asian countries. We estimated Line Pop, the most popular of those, to have gathered 1.75M downloads within 72 hours.

Tablet Download Proclivity Differences Per Country

The country with the highest tablet download proclivity is Russia, where 46% of all iOS downloads are on the iPad. Other countries with a high proclivity of iPad downloads are The Netherlands and Finland with 38% and 35%, respectively. Japan is the country with the least tablet download proclivity, as only 7% of all iOS downloads are iPad apps. The iPad revenues are already higher than the iPhone revenues in some countries when looking at revenues, e.g. Russia.

Only a Few Apps Responsible for 10% of the Revenues

Seven applications were responsible for 10% of the revenues in November 2012 in the Apple App Store for iPhone, which is a significant lower number of applications than in January 2012. Moreover in Apple App Store for iPad six applications were responsible for 10% of the revenues, while in Google Play this figure was four. The most successful cross store publisher in the Apple App Store and Google Play in 2012 were:

Download The Full Report

In the publication you will find much more detailed information about the Apple App Store and Google Play in 2012. You can now download the publication.

The press kit including all image files is also available.

Gert Jan Spriensma

Conversion Tracking Using Distimo App Analytics

Posted on by Marc Kuiper

A month ago we made some big improvements to our AppLink conversion tracking, which provides a great way to analyze user’s conversion rates from app discovery to install, from which channels they are coming and what devices they use. In this post we’ll delve into the various concepts and tools available to you through Distimo App Analytics.

AppLink

Distimo AppLink makes cross-platform app distribution easy. With an AppLink, you can link apps which are available on multiple platforms together and create a single URL for them. A user visiting this URL from their smartphone will be sent directly to the appropriate App Store — there is no need for your customers to choose and open the correct appstore!

Users visiting the AppLink from their computer or tablet will be directed to a sexy landing page where they can see for which platforms your app is available, and send a link to their phone or scan the QR code to download your app.

Custom subdomains

By default, your AppLink is available via the app.lk domain, but it’s also possible configure your own subdomain to access your AppLink, for example get.rumrungame.com. Making an AppLink available from your own domain creates extra trust for your users because they will be sure who the link belongs to. This feature is available under ‘Custom domains’ in Distimo App Analytics.

Campaigns

When publishing an AppLink, it’s important to know which sources are most successful in promoting your app, be it Facebook, a Google ad, a TV campaign or even an ad in print media. To track these sources you can create campaigns in Distimo App Analytics. A campaign works by adding a special ID to the AppLink’s URL, which is then used to identify where the user’s click came from, so you’ll know where your ad money is best spent.

Funnels

At the funnels page everything comes together as one amazing flowchart, allowing you to dive deep into the usage of your AppLink. Learn more about preferred devices, used platforms, best campaigns, number of redirects and even installs. Here’s an example of what a funnel might look like:

Funnel example

This shows you how many people visited the AppLink and how many were redirected to an App Store (if their platform is supported by you). The funnel also shows how many users installed the app, and for which platform. Note that to be able to track app installs you will need to include the Distimo SDK in your app.

It’s also possible to view how various funnel metrics evolve over time by clicking on the ‘By Date’ tab. This makes it easy to see if, for example, a certain ad campaign results in more conversions.

Redirect details

At the ‘Successful’ and ‘Unsupported’ tabs you can find out even more details about users who visited your AppLink, and were either succesfully redirected to the App Store or not (yet) supported by you.

Redirect details

Here you can see a breakdown of the various platforms, versions and devices which were redirected by your AppLink. This will tell you which platform and version is most popular for your app, so you’ll know how to prioritize testing and support.

The ‘Unsupported’ tab tells you which devices could not be redirected to an App Store, because no version of your app exists for that platform. If you’ve only built iOS and Android versions of your app, but your AppLink is visited by a lot of Windows Phone users, you may want to consider creating an app for Windows Phone as well. In addition to this, the ‘Awaiting’ tab shows an overview of people who have requested to receive a notification when your app is available for their platform.

Distimo SDK

To be able to track user conversion from click through app install, consider adding the Distimo SDK to your app. The Distimo SDK is available for free for iOS, Android and Windows Phone and is very easy to implement. The Distimo SDK is not required to get started using AppLink.

Sign up for free

Are you an app developer and interested in using Distimo App Analytics? Start using Analytics today by signing up for free. If you have any questions about this service, feel free to contact us.

Marc Kuiper