Developers, don't panic! Not 80% of iPhone apps are sucking
Wow! we did not anticipate that our distribution graph would generate such a huge echo on the media and blogosphere - from ReadWriteWeb to PCWorld. We felt compelled to follow up with some thoughts.
We'd like to bring some clarity on the confusion that our data has spread over many blog readers out there
- The 80%/20% rule is pretty universal to start with, and it’s no surprise to find it here again
- 80% does NOT correspond to the number of apps that are not downloaded, but rather corresponds to the number of apps either not downloaded nor kept on the iPhone (eg i download something and uninstalled it). The difference is important (although we suspect not huge in %)
- It does not mean 80% of the apps are Crapps (self expression), or unused (we don t measure usage) it means that most of the apps are not found.
- Does that mean you can't make a buck by being in the long tail? No. For example we have discovered that with the right pricing some apps with a few thousands install can make some very nice money. It depends what your ambition is, and how useful your app is
- Because it will always come down to that: a useless app has indeed very little chance to make it. And in those 80% there are some. let's not be blind. Users can spot them and sanction them
- Useful yet poorly marketed apps will also fail : wrong pricing, wrong merchandising, wrong promotion, wrong pre-appstore teasing....
- Timeline: we don't have the data and maybe other app analytics company (or Apple) could help with that, but in those 80% some apps have been launched and either not updated, or simply discontinued. We're not sure which part of the cake we're talking about, but definitely some apps are counted in cumulated and should not be included. Let’s not forget that a bunch of pre-3.0 apps no longer work on most devices; apps that were already in the long tail in the 2.x days have sank deeper by now.
- Actually what really matters is the number of apps that are actively maintained. It is definitely NOT 100k
- Our sample is composed of a few thousands users: yes we are a young service, and yes our sample is biased. We fully disclose that fact. But bear in mind that most if not all iPhone research that are published out there are based on similar if not smaller sample size that are extrapolated. Here we save the extrapolation because we give you 100% real data of what is actually installed on people's iPhone. (and not the apps that are sitting idle in the iTunes library)
- We count on the intelligence and sense of judgement from readers and bloggers to understand the context of that data. Like we said in a comment to one of our reader: what matters is not so much the data at a precise moment, but the trend over time.
- This is why we 'll publish regularly an update of this data set so we'll see how right,or wrong we were.
- Btw the graph looks a bit different if you double click on it by category. We'll release soon data going in that direction.
- Our observation is that as we grow and progress it is harder to detect new apps installed and we are confident that the 20/80 rule will apply in the future
- What matter is the rotation of those 20k. It is easy to understand how this will change over time. New great apps will come and replace some others.
Bottom Line: While a few posts using our data conclude that it is not worth trying your way in the app store, we believe this is precisely the opposite. In fact, more than ever, there is a growing need for great if not awesome apps. Plenty of room there! As far as we are concerned, there is a massive potential to re establish some equilibrium with the way people find and install apps (worth having). A few startups and big companies are currently working on solving that issue.
AppsFire is one of them.
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