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App Store Stats Bonanza

We all love stats. And, at AppLift, working within and for the mobile industry, we love App Store stats.

In a recent blog post, PocketGamer looked at the distribution of price tags in the Apple App Store. The figures confirm the trend for freemium as the vast majority of apps (two-thirds; approximately 800,000 of 1.2 million) are free. The article also dives deeper into the distribution level of the various price points and refers to a handy section of the website where several categories of App Store stats are listed, such as price distribution, category distribution, number of apps, and so on. We’d like to thank PocketGamer for putting this data set together, as it contains very useful information for all actors within the iOS ecosystem.

One important thing to bear in mind is that, unlike the number of app downloads or the revenue generated, which is private to developers,  information directly linked to the app store, such as the app price, is made publicly available by Apple and updated on a daily basis. In the Play Store, Google also displays the total number of installs for an app (although in brackets).

In case you would like to analyze and play around with the data yourself, here are a few useful links which provide access the app feeds from the App Store:

After PocketGamer published this data set, we decided to look more closely at App Store distribution figures, adding a few graphs to help visualize them better.

It’s an App Store stats bonanza!

Click on the graphs to enlarge them.

App Store Price Distribution

As you can see, Free apps make up just over two-thirds of the total number of apps. In second place is the cheapest price point, $0.99, with over 15 percent of all apps. Let’s also mention that, according to a December Distimo report, free apps make up to 92 percent of app store revenue on iOS and 98 percent on Android.

Above is the same graph, except displaying only the distribution for Paid apps. No real surprises; with a few smooth exceptions, the distribution curve decreases as the price tag increases.

App Category Distribution

In terms of category distribution in the US Apple App Store, Games come first, making up almost 20 percent of the total number of apps available. It is worth noting that while games total around a fifth of the total number of apps, App Annie found that they accounted for 40 percent of downloads in Q2 2013 and brought in roughly 75 percent of the revenue generated on iOS (80 percent on Android).

Number of Apps Across Time

What’s interesting to see when looking at the count of apps over time is that, in the early stages of the App Store’s existence, games used to make up nearly half of all available apps. This figure dropped considerably since then and stabilized at around 18 percent in the second half of 2013.

Number of App Submissions Across Time

The number of monthly submissions to the App Store has grown since 2008, but not regularly. It is interesting to look at the spikes of submissions right before the Christmas and New Year holiday season. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, there are visible spikes in December, but in the two years after that, 2012 and 2013, spikes occurred in November. As we see it, there are two potential reasons for this:

  • Developers are working on bigger, more complex projects, which require more planning.

  • Apple’s review time has drastically increased, encouraging developers to submit their app with a sufficient buffer period to ensure their apps or updates are released in time for Christmas.

Submission Review Times

Talking of reviews, the people at Shiny Development created an online collaborative tool, Average App Store Review Times, to allow developers to report on the time taken for the completion of their App Store submission process. From the collected data, others are able to calculate average review times on a rolling two-weekly basis.

The current average review time is currently six days (as of 7th August).

Because an average figure can be misleading without its distribution properties, the website also publishes a distribution graph:

Additionally, the website offers some historical data, with year on year numbers:

 

App Reviews

In another recent post, appFigures recently delved in App Store figures to garner some relevant distribution stats (US App Store). The basic gist is as follows:

  • Just 18 percent of apps have one review or more, meaning that four out five apps have not been reviewed at all.

  • Overall, the average number of reviews per app is 69, though this number shoots up to 177 if you only take into account apps which are ranked in a top category, and goes up even further to 453 if you only consider those that have at least one review.

  • The Social Networking and Games categories have the highest average number of reviews per app, with 351 and 229 respectively.

  • Unsurprisingly, the Games category has the highest number of reviews (47 million in total), as well as the most evenly distributed reviews.

We hope this has given you some more insight into the App Store. If you have tips, questions or feedback for us, do not hesitate to leave a comment or send us an email on blog@applift.com.

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