Quimondo

A Holiday Treat from Quimondo!

Well, with the holiday season upon us, you know you’re going to have those inevitable conversations with family and friends about the new iPhone apps you’re going to write next year.  What better way to prepare for those impromptu design sessions then to have Quimondo’s Q4 iPhone App Report at your side.  For the price of a console game, you’ll receive a 300+ page report distilled from a year’s worth of AppStore data that’s been sliced , diced, and graphed for every category.  You will see every app that has reached the top of category (and when it reigned supreme), and similar data for the Top Paid app. You’ll get daily category pricing data that will help you price your own app. You’ll find data on the relative popularity of the top free app vs the top paid app, and also see how far apart the Top, 2^nd, 10^th, 100^th and 250^th app did in relation to each other’s popularity. And to top it off, you’ll see where the top paid app ranked each day for each category. Of course there will be some of my own comments and analysis to help guide you on your journey. Each category will have a summary page with the charts alongside the analysis, and the full page charts are also included to satisfy your detailed curiosity.

Here is a sample of some of the charts found within the report…

 

You can order your copy of the report here, or click on the Reports tab above.  Payment is via PayPal, and once received I’ll be queuing it out to you via YouSendIt. (it’s a 27mb PDF file… we can also arrange other methods of delivery if that is an issue for you)

Have a Great Holiday season!

Jimmy Giliberti

 

 

iTunes AppStore Update - The Rich Get Richer... and the rest?

The latest iTunes update speaks volumes about Apple's view of the AppStore and it's publishers - You either "Have It" or "You Don't".  The change has moved the search abilities into a Black and White mode by removing a valuable "Shades of Grey" feature.

Many people will have already noticed the update to the iTunes AppStore - especially the new category of "Top Grossing".  As any developer will tell you, application discovery by the consumer is the key in making any money from their app. That is why getting into "Featured" or becoming "Top Selling" or in the "Top 25" is so important - they give the best chance of becoming self-fullfilling once achieved.

Take for example, I might be interested in buying an application to check my Horoscope. In the previous version of iTunes, I could do a search on "Horoscope" and I would have been presented a list of apps/songs/podcasts which I could order by popularity.  I would then see how some apps would rise to the top and I could easily see the second, third, etc choices to also explore.






Now in the latest version of iTunes, I just get a collection of icons, in this case almost 70, giving me as the only two decision choices how well I like the name of the product and how interesting the icon is.

It's yet to be determined if this will increase or decrease the number of application "detail pages" consumers will explore before making their choice.  This makes the buying experience more prone to Apple Style marketing - where the purchase experience is based on how well one can polish an image and present pretty pictures and prose.  With close to 70,000 apps in the AppStore to explore, we've now lost a significant factor in smart purchasing and differentiation.

iPhone App Releases Shoot Back Up

Considering the recent revelations regarding the number of people at Apple reviewing new applications for the iPhone AppStore, and the sheer number of apps Apple must review per day to keep up with demand, the number of applications showing up per day continues to climb. This is after taking into account the slowing down prior to the launch of the iPhone 3Gs.  Unlike the linear curve representing the number of individual developers, the curve for app releases has a decided upward swing, highlighting that developers are producing multiple apps, and that Apple is still keeping up. Well, somewhat. One has to wonder what the backlog is like. Anecdotal conversations have it that the turnaround time on approvals has doubled over the last year... (a 'current' time statement vs the "historical" average turnaround time statement made by Apple in it's answer to the FCC.)

iPhone Developers Go Linear.. Well At Least Their Numbers Do.

In the second review of the number of developers publishing applications on the iPhone App Store, it's amazing to find that the growth is so linear you could almost use it as a straightedge.  In fact, the number of unique publishers has doubled over the last 6 months, now approaching the 18,0000 mark.  Where admission into the Apple Developer AppStore program was once a bottleneck in getting an App to market, this is no longer the case.  One could predict that in the next 6 months there could be upwards of 35,000 developers, a considerable technical force to be reckoned with.

There's an app for that... in fact there are 25!

As any developer for the iPhone will tell you, competition is intense on the AppStore. If there aren't already 5 or 6 apps like yours when you launch, you can bet there -will be- within weeks of you going live.  One need only point to the number of flashlight apps, fart generators and beermug simulators to verify this.

Not everyone will rise to the top, but if you are interested in determining what your competition is, and how they have been doing compared to your app, I can help.  Given a list of apps you care about benchmarking against, I can run a chart similar to this one to help you understand ranking (absolute rank within category), percentile (normalized rank for the day, to take into account the growing number of apps per category. ie. a percentile of .93 says you did better than 93% of the other apps in the category that day) and other metrics like popularity, free vs paid, etc.

Drop me a line at JimmyG@msn.com if you are interested in these consulting services...

Ch..ch..ch..ch..Changes...The 10 most updated iPhone Apps

When I first started this exercise, I thought that I would find that the most changed apps were the ones "Gaming the System", in essence making artificially small changes that would put them back in the consumers eye when each new version came out.  In fact, it looks like that may only be the case with two of this small set of apps. Each of the remaining 8 apps made substantial changes over time.  That said, it's amazing to think that an application as simple as "Bubble Wrap" would have had 33 updates and "Classic Tic Tic Toe" would have had 29.  [It's even more interesting to note that both of these were created by the same company...!]

Overall, of the 54,463 applications that were reviewed, almost 10% had more than 5 updates, 1.5% had more than 10, only .12 % had more than 20 and a mere .02% updated more than 25 times.  Three apps have changed more than 30 times, and one application, "Brain X Get Smarter", has had an amazing 40 updates! Here's the top 10 list and a chart representing the rest.

	Title	Updates
1	Brain X Get smarter!	40
2	iBubbleWrap!	33
3	GymGoal Lite	32
4	Fast Food Calorie Counter	30
5	Unit Converter	29
6	iFitness	29
7	Money	29
8	Spend - Budgeting	29
9	Classic Tic Tac Toe	29
10	Vision	27

New Release and Update Patterns for iPhone Games

Every day, more applications are being released and updated on the iPhone AppStore. While the initial release minimum per day has been around 40 games per day, peak daily releases has risen steadily from 40 in January to over 120 in June. It would be interesting to speculate whether this is ultimately shaped by the number of applications Apple can test and approve per day, or if this is a direct indication of the number of games being submitted by developers.

 

While the number of initial releases seems to be growing linearly, the number of application updates seems to be staying rather constant, on average about 60 per day. This is interesting, as one would expect the number to increase relative to the number of applications in the AppStore.  There were two lulls, one around the end of year when Apple was on Vacation, and the other in preparation for the 3.0 OS rollout.

 

 

Added together, all releases (Initial and Updates) seems to show a clear curve, with a peak in the middle of May. I don't know whether this means we are seeing a decline in developer activity, or whether developers are hunkered down for adding 3.0 functionality.  Discoverability continues to be a huge issue, so I am waiting to see a change in activity indicating developers may be reconsidering new development. At this time, there does not seem to be a slowdown in the "panning for gold" in them thar  iPhone hills.

When 1 becomes N

There's an interesting article today in InfoWorld that talks about the game of chicken that Apple and Palm are  currently playing with each other regarding iTunes Syncronization.

This is not a battle to be taken lightly.  Apple is now a large enough player to deal with the same issues that IBM did in the 70s/80s and Microsoft did in the 90's:  When you become such a dominent player in an industry, you will ultimately be asked to play nice with others or you will be forced to. (Can you say "Consent Decree"? )

Apple's next move is critical. If it allows Palm to 'get away' with this, it is inviting a host of other companies to follow suit. (or maybe file suit?) If it prevents Palm now, it will likely get away with it as everyone fully expects Apple to protect it's IP.  If not, it only prolongs the moment when an inevitable bug (whether intentional or not) gets introduced somewhere down the line that breaks Pre's ability to sync.  The conspiracy theorists will be all over this in a minute and Apple will be forever forced to do damage control.

I was at IBM in the days when all APIs were required to be either published publically or found in an OEM document available by request. Apple's system works as well as it does because they keep their APIs so close to the vest.  It will be interesting to watch the cultural affect this would have if Apple is forced to open up this closed system.

1984 + 25 Years.... What's changed?

Here it is 2009, 25 years after Apple's groundbreaking 1984 Ad campaign that sought to break us out of the status quo and to (borrowing from the later iPod campaign) - Think Different.   Well, I am sitting at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference and I am having an interesting time reconciling this message.  There are over 5000 developers attending this sold-out conference and I can't get the image out of my head that we are all sitting in a dark auditorium with our trusty silver finish MacBook Pros open and soaking up everything flowing from the lips of the Body Apple up on stage.  It's actually kinda freaky.

It's also interesting to watch the commercials on TV with' PC' battling 'Mac' on the values of  "choice" vs "we know what's right for you". As someone who has lived through the dizzying diversity of PC and Mobile platforms, there is a peace in knowing you only have to understand one platform to do your work.  But what have we given up?

So... you want to be number one? Be quick, you have about 30 days.

Reviewing the apps in the iPhone AppStore that have reached Top of Category between 11/1/2008 and 6/1/2009 shows that the number of days from launch of the application to the day it first reached the top slot was most common to be one week, and most likely within 30 days of it's inital release. Outside that, it is decidely unlikely that it will ever be able to get enough exposure to reach the top slot.  These numbers point directly to the issues of discoverablilty, as the first week is where you may show up in "what's new" or be on the first page or two of an iTunes browse of category.  Once a user has to start searching for your application, you may not achieve enough critical mass to make it to the top. That said, there is a long enough tail to show that there are still some applications that have used external marketing or word of mouth to beat the odds.

 

How long can you be number one?

In looking at the applications that have reached the coveted position of being top in their category on the iPhone AppStore, there appears to be three major groupings.  The main bulk of these applications  seem to have reigned supreme between 1 and 16 days.  There is another set that have managed to make it to upwards of 30 days at the top. Lastly, there are a handful of apps that have real legs - basically owning their category for half or even all the days in the data collected.

Congratulations to those that have made it to the top.  The big question is now is what can one do to retain the position with this much competition?

Applications continue to disappear from iTunes

Apple has once again limited the number of applications that are shown when one browses the category sections of iTunes.  Where Apple had initially capped this number at 3500 in February, they have now reduced the number to 2500.   That means in one fell swoop, 7000 applications are no longer visible in the top 7 high volume categories like Games, Entertainment, Lifestyle, and Utilities.

One has to wonder how a new application is discovered by a customer, as many applications never get shown in the 'What's new' section when they are initially launched on the AppStore.

Many developers are turning to external marketing using YouTube videos, Facebook applications and adverstising buys to let people know about their apps. It would be helpful if Apple did not impose this arbitrary barrier to discovery.

iPhone App Pricing - "I'd buy that for a dollar!"

As the number of applications increases each day, (now over 30000 unique apps) the price charged for those applications remains fairly consistent. Many might think that free apps rule, but the 99 cent app is actually king of the hill. 

 

 75% of all apps in the AppStore are priced under $2, and the 99 cent app has increased its percentage share by over 5% in the last couple of months.  The percentage of free apps has stayed fairly constant at about just over 20%. It's interesting to note that greater than 90% of all the apps on the AppStore cost less than $5, with the $9.99 band representing the set of "premium" apps that represent the bulk of what's left.

Microsoft Acknowledges iPhone

Many premier internet sites inspect the User Agent of an incoming request to see if the content is destined for an iPhone. Those that do this have given users a much cleaner and enjoyable experience on the device. Those that do this incorrectly have often left users frustrated and unsatisfied

Users of Microsoft's MSN Mail or Hotmail have recently been in the frustrated and unsatisfied camp. In fact, the user experience has degraded over the last year, where text and headers have been shortened to the point of being unusable. As you can see in the left picture, message titles and sender info used only 10 characters on the screen.

Microsoft has finally fixed this by updating their Mobile Live Mail content with iPhone specific rendering, making it much easier to see who is sending you mail and what the subject is.  (You can see this updated look on the right side of the photo.) Individual emails are now rendered properly for the screen as well.

Thank you, Microsoft, for finally updating your mail site.  Now, if you could please make it so I can scan more than 10 email entries at a time....

Number of AppStore vendors approaching the 10,000 mark

When Apple unveiled the AppStore in July 2008, they claimed that 250,000 people had downloaded the iPhone SDK,  that 25,000 had applied to sell on the AppStore and 2000 had initially been admitted into the program.  Since the launch of the AppStore, the number of developers has been rising consistently each day, and the number of unique vendors on any given day will soon reach 10,000.

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AppStore Limits Discoverability - iTunes' Magic Number is 3500

At turn of the year, after a scheduled Holiday break period,  the number of applications available in some of most popular iPhone categories suddenly shot skyward.  The Entertainment category was most affected, reaching almost 4900 applications by mid January.  At that time, a decision seemed to have been made to limit the number of applications visible using the category browse capability of the desktop iTunes, and by Valentine's Day three categories (Entertainment, Games(All) and Utilities) were being limited to 3500 applications retrieved.  At the time of this writing, Books, Education, Lifestyle, and Reference have since reached this plateau.

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It is the hope of every developer to get their application seen and available to the public.  We know that an iPhone user is not going to be scrolling through 140 screens of apps (assuming 25 per screen) looking for new applications. Without removing this boundary, the only other way to find an application in iTunes would be to search on the right keyword using the search facility.