AppsFire.com ★ blog ★

discover and share apps on ★ fire ★ 
Tags


Filed under

market

 
March 9, 2010

Those apps generating Millions of Dollars

As the App market is maturing we're hearing more and more success stories of Apps generating real cash. Smule with Ocarina and I am T-Pain is clearly above $10 million/year and Doodle Jump, a 2 guy story, is in the couple of million dollars a year. We know a few Apps that are generating revenues in 10s of millions a year (in the Game category). 


The App business is a real business and it will become more and more so over time as the adoption of the iPhone grows and extends to new platform. And that is only from 1 single platform.

App developers willing to jump in the App market need to realize this is not just above creating a cool mobile software but really creating a business. 

We are happy to see those cases coming to light. 

Saying the App business is not a business is the same saying as declaring the software business is not a business or the ringtone business is not a business (as a matter of fact we believe the apps are the new ringtones) . When those 2 businesses started not one really saw the light. 

AppsFire has taken the bet from day 1 the App business will be big. And we still believe so.

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   apps   iphone   market  

Comments [0]

February 1, 2010

Fascinating visual projections of the iPhone apps market data

Truly fascinating: both the data and its visual representation by Trefis. via theNextWeb [if you read via RSS, we recommend you jump to the our blog] 

 

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   apps   data   iphone   market  

Comments [0]

December 16, 2009

Morgan Stanley: the future of mobile internet is not Search (read Google) but Apps (read Apple)

I've just finished reading the very impressive report prepared by Morgan Stanley on the future of the Mobile internet (save an hour in a quite room). This is a must read for whoever is part of the mobile industry. It includes real key data on mobile devices, metrics, companies business figures..

 

The report is naturally focusing on the iPhone/iTouch case which is the game changer in that industry.

What is really compelling in that report, and that is the underlying fact of this whole presentation, is how the mobile internet is getting us, users, used to consume differently the web thanks to new devices, infrastructures and mainly the app ecosystems

When on the computer the starting point is a search engine for the mainstream: namely Google, on the mobile our starting point are Apps. (For now ) Namely Apple

Google knows it and that's why they need to catch up on Apple, including creating their own device. Google can't afford not to become the entry point

This is what lead them on the computer to create a browser and an OS. In order to remain the entry point.

But how do you deal with that with Apps, which are slicing the web in a convenient user friendly way? How many of us start really use Google on their iPhone vs the rest of the Apps?

Apple is winning the App war (read the mobile web war) for now. Not Google.

PS: one surprising missing point in Morgan Stanley's presentation is the notion of discoverability of apps. It is and will be a critical issue that no one is addressing correctly (including Apple) and that will condition the development of the mobile internet as an ecosystem

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   analysis   apple   iphone   market   mobile   report  

Comments [0]

October 27, 2009

Good news: the App store grows to 100k apps/ Bad news: The long tail is VERY long [exclusive appsfire data]

Today the App Store has passed the 100k apps available on the App Store (sept was officially announced 85k). This is a great news and the pace keeps growing. 

But there is a bad news. Very few apps are enjoying the ride.

We have found out that actually 20k apps are actually used (meaning installed and kept on people's iPhone). This number may grow with our user base, but it is a clear indicator that only 20% of all apps are actually raising interest.

The second number which is more dramatic is that there is a very very very long tail of apps: The graph below gives you an indication of the rank of each app we scan (based on the number of installation) and the % of users that own them.

A very little number of apps makes it above 50% of iphone owners (easy to guess which one: facebook, shazam,...) it goes down VERY fast. The app rank 1000 is owned by less than 2% of the iPhone owners (1.76%) and it goes down very fast also.

Bottom line:

  • the app store has a majority of apps (80%) not really actively installed
  • Of the installed based a very little number make it to a big number of install.
  • the long tail effect of the App store is dramatic

Why is this happening you ask? Well we have an idea. The App store is not designed for the long tail but for hits. No matter how great the App store is doing the discovery process is poor and only best sellers are really making it. This is even more true when you realize that most apps are downloaded from the mobile version of iTunes.

Of course this has to be ajusted by the fact that not all apps have the same "age" in the iTunes, but we saw recently growing to the top 20 in less than a month (like the Tpain apps).

App developers need to be aware of that fact. And marketing an app is more than key in this jungle. Lots of great apps are not discovered because there is only 100 places in the top 100, not because they are not great enough.

Soon, Appsfire will have tools to help solve some of this. [you can already download Appsfire for you computer and your iPhone to show and discover apps from people around you ]


Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   app store   apps   iphone   market   stats  

Comments [21]

October 11, 2009

Short thought: Are free apps really free?

What a stupid question. no? Well maybe not. If you got an app for free from the App Store, you probably noticed that many of them serve advertising. Like in the example below


Now if you are running your app on a data network (which is not wifi), those ads are served dynamically via the internet, meaning live.

This simply means that by running a free app, you are using your data package. Many times this does not really matter because the app requires you to connect to the web in order to be used (for example Last.fm), so the incremental usage of that free app is not really critical.

But if you thought your app would run locally and that could use for free, you're wrong. A free app with advertising will use your data package.

Wait! if you have an unlimited data package, then of course you're safe and you probably won't mind. But if not: mind your bills

The only problem, which is more general today, is that there is no way to know what apps are consuming in terms of data. That would be a tremendous information

For which either Apple, or Mobile operators will have to open their data a little more.

What they should do is either allow developers to have access to that information (splitting generated by the app and usage generated from the ad serving) or give general access directly to the user. Making money from advertising is a great thing, but consumers should know what it cost them.

For now mobile ad formats are rather simple and static, but the day those formats will become richer (like on the computer) the data required to serve them will become bigger.

The same way we know from our operators which phone number generated minutes of call (and therefore part of our bill), we should get the same from apps.

Agree?

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   apps   data   free   market  

Comments [0]

October 6, 2009

Every brand will have an app: cool research on Luxury Brands and iPhone apps

We're tracking closely the subject but this research brings a new outlook worth sharing

iPhone Apps & Luxury Brands

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   apps   brands   iphone   luxury   market   research  

Comments [0]

October 6, 2009

Not all App Stores are equal: Blackberry apps 3X more expensive than the iPhone

Don't forget the minimum listing price in Blackberry App World is $2.99 (which needs to change...) via techcrunch.com

 

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   app store   blackberry   iphone   market   price  

Comments [0]

September 29, 2009

Facebook vs Twitter on the iPhone: Compete says something different. Why?

Compete lead a research about how users use their smartphone. There is some interesting data in that report. Some of which we questioned (if this is the same report). 

Another piece of information that stands out is that about 70% of users use Facebook from their iPhone, which is pretty comparable to our own research (to be precise % of iPhone owners who have installed the iPhone app). 

Facebook is hot among iPhone owners: 71% of iPhone users report accessing Facebook from their mobile device, 37% listed Facebook as one of their top three most utilized apps and 18% claim it's their favorite app.

However Compete declares that only 26% only use Twitter from the iPhone. To be honest this is a little surprising and if the method is declarative i think it is worth digging a little deeper.

From our report 60+% have installed a Twitter app on their iPhone and from our declarative poll close to 65% (more than 1200 respondents) use Twitter from their iPhone (more than Facebook)

So what is it going to be? The answer has probably to do with the way the sample was built (Compete sample was made of 100+ respondents who own an iPhone). Our sample is probably biased by the nature and age of our service, but we believe the biais is not that strong (confirmed by the fact many of our stats match others reports built with serious methodology).

I'd love to hear more from Compete on that one.

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   data   iphone   market   research   usage  

Comments [3]

September 28, 2009

2 Billion+ iPhone Apps Downloaded, and discoverability still as a major challenge

As the Apple App Store grows bigger and bigger, the company faces newer challenges, especially those of discoverability.
Challenge for Apple, users and developers...via gigaom.com

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   app store   apps   market  

Comments [0]

September 24, 2009

Yep. The App Store is a business for Apple. A big one

The analysis goes deeper into the weeds from there, and when he comes out, Sacconaghi concludes that Apple generates $60 million to $110 million in revenue per quarter for itself, plus another $140 million to $250 million for the developers. Assuming a 50% operating margin, he finds that the App Store is contributing 2-4 cents a share in profits per quarter. He notes that it took an estimated 6-8 quarters for iTunes to reach a similar revenue run rate, despite Apple capturing 100% of those revenues.
via blogs.barrons.com

Loading mentions Retweet
Filed under  //   app store   apple   business   iphone   market  

Comments [0]