Comments for The Truth about Mobile Application Stores

The Truth about Mobile Application Stores

2010-02-22T16:19:27Z

At the recent Mobile World Congress 2010, Dutch app store analytics firm Distimo presented their findings on the six largest mobile application stores in existence today: the iTunes App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. In their presentation, they analyzed everything including store size, store growth, the most popular applications and where you can find the best deal. They recently shared some of the highlights from that presentation by way of a slideshow embedded on their blog.

For mobile industry insiders, some of the findings won't be all that shocking, just common knowledge paired with statistics. However, there were a few surprises that caught us off guard, maybe they will you too.

]]> Distimo collects public application data from app stores and also offers developers an analytics tool which is used to monitor their apps and those belonging to their competitors. After examining and analyzing the data, the company releases market reports detailing their findings.

Free Vs. Paid Apps

One of their most recent reports looked at which application stores have the highest percentage of free apps. Not surprisingly, the Android Market was the winner here. In an interview with Venture Beat, Distimo co-founder and CEO Vincent Hoogsteder said this was due to multiple factors: the nature of the open-source operating system from Google attracts the sort of developers that enjoy giving away their works and the open nature of the application- approval process (that is, no review board middleman exists between app creation and public release) makes it easier for casual developers to launch. Also, anecdotal evidence points to developers' dissatisfaction with Google Checkout - paid Android apps are required to implement this payment method for purchase, a much slower process than Apple's 1-click buying process.

The different ratios of free apps versus paid was one of the findings presented during MWC 2010. In the chart below, you can see the varying percentages by store. (Note that Distimo's findings were focused on the U.S. market only). Android has the most free applications (57% free) and Nokia has the most paid (85% paid). The next closest store to Android in terms of free is Palm, followed by Apple, Blackberry, Windows Phone, and finally Nokia.

Another interesting finding had to do with the prices for the paid applications. Apple, Android and Palm were all in the same range when it came to the average price for paid apps ($3.27 to $3.62). However, RIM and Microsoft were more than twice as high ($8.26 and $6.99, respectively). This didn't necessarily have to do with the different types of applications available in each store - sometimes, the exact same app was just priced higher on other platforms. For example, Tetris was $4.99 on Apple and $6.99 on Windows. IM+ was $4.99 on Apple and $29.99 on Blackberry.

Store Size and Growth: Look Out for Android!

Android is now the second-largest application store, reports Distimo, with 19, 297 apps. It's still a far cry from Apple's 150,998 apps, though. And other competitors are farther still. Ovi, we were surprised to discover, is the third largest with 6,118 apps available while Blackberry has a respectable 4,756. Palm has only 1,492 and Windows has 693. Apple is also the fastest growing store with a shocking 13,865 new applications added per month. Android's growth is picking up too - they now have 3,005 new apps per month (15%). Relative to the number of apps housed, Android is actually the fastest growing store.

Games, Games, Games

Also discussed were the popularity of applications by category. On Apple's store, games and entertainment were the most popular categories (58% and 18%, respectively). Somewhat more surprising was the popularity of games on Blackberry, the platform often used more by enterprise and SMBs than by consumers. Here, games were also in the lead with 29% popularity to only 18% for utilities. One would have thought that would be the other way around - that corporate users would be more likely download apps that helped them work, not play. Apparently, that's not the case.

For more details on this presentation, you can view the entire slideshow on Slideshare or contact the company itself for a more in-depth marketing report.

Update: Microsoft got in touch to let us know that there are now "over 1245" Windows Mobile apps available in their Marketplace. The number had increased since Distimo released their report.

Comment from John Graham on 2011-08-03

2011-08-03T13:22:36Z

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Comment from Matt Powell on 2011-06-17

2011-06-17T12:34:22Z

Hey, Great post **

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Comment from Cazador Mcmc on 2011-06-11

2011-06-11T07:16:39Z

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Comment from 12345shop on 2011-04-05

2011-04-05T07:29:25Z

great post

Comment from Ashish Gupta on 2011-03-15

2011-03-15T21:08:55Z

no. of free apps available for apple = 25% of 150889 i.e 37772.
no. of free apps available for android customers = 57% of 19897 i.e 11341.
Still apple apps is much ahead of android.

Comment from windows_xp_slow on 2011-03-15

2011-03-15T16:23:38Z

there

Comment from Healthy Times on 2010-12-05

2010-12-05T08:42:04Z

It all comes down to money in the end - no matter where it begins...

Comment from buy hgh on 2010-10-26

2010-10-26T10:58:50Z

What you are forgetting to mention here is that on the iPhone for instance you can officially only install software from the App Store. Jailbreaking is required for obtaining software by other means (Cydia for example). However for the BlackBerry OTA downloads have traditionally been the way to install apps. App World is still fairly new and nowhere as large as MobiHand / CrackBerry App Store. Also, it's worth mentioning that a good chunk of Java (Micro Edition) apps work out of the box on BlackBerry.

Taking all this into account will make the figure for available BlackBerry apps much higher, maybe even getting close to the iPhone figure.

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2010-10-25T16:05:17Z

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Comment from Jogos Gratis on 2010-10-12

2010-10-13T00:47:40Z

No wonder why Android is growing more than that other app stores. Android has 57% of the apps for free.
The word free attract more people, even if they have to pay it later.
For example, if they give me an app for free and I think it's valuable for my personal life or for my business I wouldn't mind paying for it later.
However, if I have to buy the app even though I never tried it before I might never buy it.
The codes for Apple apps are too strict, that's makes the developer to leave in order to have a more free environment to create great apps.

Comment from Cris on 2010-10-01

2010-10-01T14:15:49Z

Currious to know what impact you see these MAS having on Smartphone sales. Do you see them directly impacting Smartphone sales in a positive way? Is the consumer situation “Wow I have purchased a smartphone it has so many cool apps I will use/buy” or “I want to do all these cool things with my phone that these apps enable and so I will go out and buy a smartphone.” Is there room for both scenarios? Is one more likely than the other? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic.
Best,jogos

Comment from Android Programmer on 2010-09-20

2010-09-20T08:13:58Z

The mobile application companies are earning this high, i thought who will purchase when there are free application available,Android is really catching up fast & one of the major reason might be its power of open platform too.

Comment from android phone apps on 2010-09-13

2010-09-13T08:37:41Z

Really confirms what I've been thinking over the past three months or so. I work for a telco store selling phones and we are starting to sell android phones 2 to 1 vs blackberry and 3 to 1 vs IPhone.

@Revel Mob:
I'd love to get my hands on that info as well.

Comment from Clean My PC on 2010-09-06

2010-09-06T13:42:54Z

Android is really catching up fast. That is the power of open platform. Of course free gets a lot of following. Competition is good for consumer though.

Comment from daniel on 2010-08-13

2010-08-13T20:21:33Z

The reason why games, entertainment are more popular than utilities is the app's life.
Example: One can use Office for his/her lifetime but noone can play a game for his/her lifetime.

Utility apps have much long lifetime than games, most games span maximum a year or two.

Comment from Sashko on 2010-08-12

2010-08-13T02:37:37Z

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You can choose any look for your character instead of boring standard profile pictures. There are a variety of planets where you can discuss common interests. You can even create your own planet with your own set of rules and norms. Some more information about it you may find there: http://in-galaxy.com/?p=9.

Comment from Revel Mob on 2010-05-03

2010-05-03T12:40:52Z

Great article - thank you. What's missing from the analysis - is the number of registered developers and the statistical breakdown of how fast this number is growing in respect of each store. Would be great if someone could provide it.

Comment from Wansai on 2010-05-01

2010-05-01T18:30:36Z

I think it's important to note that the number of "apps" any brand has is used more for marketing purposes than anything else.

There is a cutoff point in terms of practicality when numbers of apps simply no longer matter except to people who want to compare "sizes", and like I stated, used as a marketing tool. And this number is far lower than the thousands of apps being marketing around. There comes a point where the management of user applications is the focus, rather than what the user is using their device for. Most apps that are worth using are cross platform developed anyway.

While it's good to know the numbers, I am not so sure it makes any real practical difference to users or developers. The importance that this data seems to imply regarding number of apps is misleading (I'm not saying you are misleading us, but that the numbers mislead.

---Number of apps is only important insofar as it being a good marketing tool.---

In real, practical and broad sense, whether you have 1000 apps or 150k apps, the ones worth using and of any quality are the ones available to all platforms. Even at 5000 apps, you will not go through them all.

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2010-04-02T07:36:11Z

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Comment from manuparis on 2010-03-13

2010-03-14T07:37:52Z

it is difficult to compare the different market

for exemple to can download so many app from any symbian site (for nokia) witch are not in the ovi store!!don t forget that it is an open system. you can download,you tube google map an g mail from the google site. i have an android phone, and i had to download so many app just to make it works propely, (alarm, kill task, new adress aganda etc)

how many app worth the free ovi map navigation system. . working anywhere without connexion. you can donwload for free precise map of the entire world. wherever you are you can also have a look at the lonely planet or michelin guide(history restaurant hotel)still for free. you can also download for free a stranslator to any language, even very rare language (stil not in ovi store). sorry for my very bad english

Comment from Randy Giusto on 2010-03-11

2010-03-11T16:39:28Z

The difference between Apple and Android from a cultural standpoint is that consumers who have an iPhone are used to paying for apps. Early consumers of the first round of Android products are open source fans, typically use a lot of freeware and shareware on their PCs, and don't normally pay for apps. So that's why there is a higher percentage of free apps in Android Market as opposed to the Apple App Store.

This may change in Android Market over time as more devices come to market and more consumers adopt Android-based devices. But then it may not. Several large content providers are looking towards creating Android apps to serve as viewers to serve up a portion of paid for content on the web, or use the free app to drive the person back to a subscription model for online content. So the brands are using the two platforms very differently.

Comment from Joel Klassen on 2010-03-05

2010-03-06T06:06:01Z

Nice article. I like the presentation of stats. One thing that bothers me is that there are multiple app stores which different strengths and weaknesses. For this, I turn to www.appboy.com where iPhone, Android, BB and Pre apps are all combined into one store! It's also a social media site, blog and a place where developers can promote their apps. Great site!

Comment from Michael on 2010-03-04

2010-03-04T18:11:31Z

The selling process in current App Stores implementations is based on a simple product search, category browsing, and user ratings. This works well for the small number of applications which have made it to the top of the charts. The rest of the developers bring in less than optimal revenue from their less popular applications.
App Stores should adopt modern Ecommerce techniques to help developers to generate more revenue. In fact, increased sales volume should be the App Store operator's main objective. They should take tools that make online retailers successful (bundling, SEO, cross-sell/up-sell, promotions, and tier pricing) and apply them in the Marketplace environment.
Read my blog "Inside the App Store: The New Marketplace for Digital Goods"
[url]http://www.getelastic.com/app-stores/[/url] for more on App Store from the Ecommerce perspective.

Comment from alikobant on 2010-02-27

2010-02-27T16:52:12Z

which would give you a feel of any potential untapped market.

Comment from vegetarian army rations on 2010-02-26

2010-02-27T06:54:06Z

I never knew that the mobile application companies are earning this high, i thought who will purchase when there are free application available, but all this was wrong and Apple doing really great in this business.

Comment from kasey farrar on 2010-02-26

2010-02-26T21:35:29Z

Hi Sarah, I'm Kasey Farrar and I look after PR for Ovi Store. It's worth noting that globally we're approaching 7000 content items for our most popular devices like the Nokia N95, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and many others. Some devices have more and some devices have less, but for us, it's less about a total number and more about surfacing content that's relevant to our users in more than 180 countries, for over 100 Nokia devices, and in 30 languages. Thanks.

Comment from monadical on 2010-02-26

2010-02-26T17:44:24Z

Of course this begs the question, what are the sales volumes? The number of apps in a store, the number added to the store, and the breakdown is all interesting, but it's sort of irrelevant unless you know the actual sales. You could have a store with a bazillion apps but no one ever buys them. Not likely, but we'd kind of like to know what business these stores do. It would be good to know the actual volume itself, but it would also be nice to know the percentage of platform owners that buy, which would give you a feel of any potential untapped market.

Another issue, smaller nit, is that the categorization is a bit broad. Apple is easy because there are only a few platforms, and they mostly all run everything (with a few exceptions). But other categorize, like Nokia, aren't very meaningful unless you break it down by more specific platform type.

Comment from Remco van den Elzen on 2010-02-25

2010-02-25T15:39:58Z

@Bill Haynes,

This presentation focused on the US stores and hence we counted the number of applications available in the US for each store. I'm assuming that Microsoft's number is the total number of applications available worldwide.

Best,
Remco

Comment from cellictica on 2010-02-25

2010-02-25T14:47:17Z

Thanks for this study, it's really interesting. We develop to all these platforms and I might add one reason more why you will find so many free apps in Android compared to others. You really are obliged to use Google Checkout which is only supported for merchandisers in about 5 countries. If you happen to be in one of the rest (220) countries, like in our case in Finland, you have no choice: you are forced to go with free apps or ad-funded models. No wonder you get 57% free...

Comment from Bill on 2010-02-24

2010-02-24T20:22:39Z

This Microsoft addendum is funny. Wow - they added 600 apps in a week (? or two). How many did Android add in one week? probably 750. How many did Apple add in a week? Probably 4000. I am not sure why you are giving a special callout for Microsoft. Everyone's store is growing, so any survey will be a snapshot. MS clearly don't like being a laggard, but you shouldn't do them special favors. And, in any case, all those apps will be obsolete when Windows 7 is launched - so why bother...

Comment from JustMeHere on 2010-02-24

2010-02-24T17:34:01Z

You also forgot to do your homework

Android has more than 30000 apps as of Feb 24th!. And over 57% of them are free. Where did you come up with the numbers you got?

Visit www.androlib.com for uptodate info!

Comment from vara411 on 2010-02-24

2010-02-24T14:46:44Z

@pdaguy beat me to the punch. The article is very interesting but misrepresents the facts somewhat. Palm's App Catalog just exited beta in January and has seen considerable growth since then (as pdaguy points out, over 500 new apps since January to present, including over 20 3D games) ... But like many articles before this one, Palm's accomplishments are always overshadowed by attention to other platforms.

And one last thing: how many apps does a a platform need before it's "respectable?" Going on absolute numbers and disregarding quality vs quantity has always bugged me. Yes, Android Market has seen impressive growth, but having owned an Android device I can tell you that the quality of many of its apps is lacking. And I don't even need to get started on Apple's App Store, do I?

Watch Palm a little closer... I think you might be surprised...

Comment from pdaguy on 2010-02-24

2010-02-24T14:17:01Z

I find it unsettling that you call out growth as a percent for the Android store (15%) but no others, and leave Palm off the growth chart at the same time. If we plug those numbers in (~1500 and ~250/month growth = ~17%), it begs the question even more: why did you leave the actually fastest growing store off the growth chart (and why didn't you call out the growth as a % numbers for all stores?).

Comment from Rational thinking on 2010-02-24

2010-02-24T11:20:17Z

Taking all this into account will make the figure for available BlackBerry apps much higher, maybe even getting close to the iPhone figure.

Comment from The Rookie Blogger on 2010-02-23

2010-02-23T16:34:07Z

Oh really...? ahehehehe thanks for posting this!

Comment from wizlb.myopenid.com on 2010-02-23

2010-02-23T15:35:49Z

Why would you choose to review "Windows Marketplace", which nobody uses? Handango has 6204 apps for Windows Mobile.

Comment from dk worldwide on 2010-02-23

2010-02-23T15:19:01Z

Free has worked for Google for a long time. Why shouldn't it work for Android devs? ADC1&2 also fueled free apps in the store.

Comment from Lothar Behrens on 2010-02-23

2010-02-23T15:17:35Z

Hi,

why no opensourcestore?

Then there is a independent store for all open source based applications. Okay vendors like apple or other store related vendors may not allow using such a store, but why not. At least the usual PC user may use it instead of fiddling to get a piece of software installed by it self.

The point for an open source store is not to have another one where you get all the cost free applications but rather know you (the buyer) will directly support the open source developers as I am one of these nerds.

And another question: Why only sell software this way?

I think there could also sold services around open source software and that is the main business around open source software in my point of view.

Lothar

Comment from Eric on 2010-02-23

2010-02-23T14:21:11Z

I'd like to point out the fact that the Android Market's impressive growth might be somewhat deceiving. The absence of any form of review process has led to new forms of store flooding and other variety of spams in the form of applications that are just gateways to websites, or submissions that are more packaged content than they are applications. It didn't take long for new freedoms to lead to new abuses.

In order to gain an insight as to the extend of this form of flooding, you can take a quick look at the store's "just in" listings and notice that these "fake" applications count for a substantial portion of daily submissions - probably about half these days.

The Android community does not yet have the proper tools to police its application store but once it does (hoping here that it will soon before the store turns into an irrelevant spam bucket) the rate of new application submissions will probably look more inline with iTunes' AppStore.

Comment from Lars Tong Strömberg on 2010-02-23

2010-02-23T09:38:21Z

What would be really interesting is the trend for free vs. paid. I have a strong feeling free is gaining share quite quickly right now overall and obviously, the driving factor here is Android. Does it spill over to the other platforms over time? i guess it will. Free and open wins in the end nonetheless.

Comment from Vincent Hoogsteder on 2010-02-23

2010-02-23T09:20:11Z

@Patrick This comparison focuses on the 6 largest handset manufacturer
stores. I understand your point on GetJar, Handango and Handmark. We
are well aware that these a very large stores, as you can see
on our site www.appstores.info. In the presentation at MWC and on our blog
(http://tinyurl.com/y8ommxo) however we clearly state that we compare
handset stores and not independent stores for this occasion.

Comment from Bruce on 2010-02-22

2010-02-23T05:12:50Z

You can become an Android developer for $25.00. That is less than the $100.00 it costs to publish at the Apple Store. The high percentage of free apps at the Android Market may be because of the lower entry price. I don't know what the developer entry price is for the other stores.

Comment from Sarah Perez on 2010-02-22

2010-02-23T04:40:09Z

@Jim: Not confused, just poorly worded. Thanks for pointing it out. Corrected.

Comment from kurs on 2010-02-22

2010-02-23T04:12:22Z

apple store is the holy grail.

Comment from Gavin on 2010-02-22

2010-02-23T03:49:55Z

Pretty interesting read.

Comment from Patrick on 2010-02-22

2010-02-23T01:22:24Z

This piece is slightly inaccurate. It completely fails to mention any of the independent app stores such as GetJar, Handango or Handmark. GetJar actually is the 2nd largest app store behind Apple by downloads with over 800 million downloads to date. My assumption is that this omission was because GetJar doesn't actually sell content since it's all downloaded for free. However, that doesn't change the fact that GetJar has more downloads by far then the next 5 stores combined and a catalog of over 65,000 apps supporting all operating systems. Handmark and Handango do sell apps and have been doing so for a number of years long before these other players came to market.

An omission of this type is understandable if the assumptions behind the research are clearly stated from the beginning (ie paid only or OEM only). Let's hope future research pieces are a bit more comprehensive if Distimo are going to earn their stripes as a reliable source of information for developers, agencies, brands and carriers.

Patrick.

Comment from Rob Colburn on 2010-02-22

2010-02-23T01:10:36Z

In absolute numbers, in should be no surprise that Games beat other Apps on any device - they are consumed. I won't be purchasing another RSS reader.

Comment from Spidey on 2010-02-22

2010-02-23T01:04:11Z

"Last I checked, Blackberries don't even have 3D hardware accelerated game apps"

Some models do. The Storm2 has OpenGL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xicBi_tkyjA

Comment from Jim on 2010-02-22

2010-02-22T23:19:05Z

The section on free vs paid applications is wrong. The author is confusing percent with number.

For example, it says "One of their most recent reports looked at which application stores have the highest number of free apps. Not surprisingly, the Android Market was the winner here." Looking at the math I don't see this. Android may have the highest percentage of free applications but it is pretty clear Apple has the largest number of free applications. It also clearly has the highest number of paid applications, not Nokia.

That doesn't change the question of why Android programmers prefer to write free vs paid applications however.

Comment from rwuser on 2010-02-22

2010-02-22T22:07:34Z

Last I checked, Blackberries don't even have 3D hardware accelerated game apps like the ones for the Palm Pre and iPhone. I wouldn't be surprised to see how low gaming for the Blackberry has remained when the whole platform itself wasn't designed for true gaming experience. Also, companies that support the Blackberry for the businesses also prefer to prohibit games and entertainment apps on their devices to reduce potential security breaches and other risks to their business. Not to mention loss of productivity...Blackberries are designed only for work, no play.

Comment from David Thomas Garcia on 2010-02-22

2010-02-22T17:29:05Z

People play mobile games to pass the time, something even businesspeople using BlackBerries can appreciate during endless meetings or sitting in airline terminals. I was surprised the games percent is as low as it is on BlackBerry. I wonder if it is due to work vs. play demographic difference or due to the platform's experience.