Chatting about the AppStore

11:59

ericasadun:

Welcome to Today's TUAW chat

Thursday July 17, 2008 11:59 ericasadun

12:00

ericasadun:

We're here today with Youssef Francis, who recently has been doing a statistical study of the iPhone App Store

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:00 ericasadun

12:01

francis:

Hey there Erica, thanks for having me

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:01 francis

12:02

ericasadun:

So Francis, tell me about what you've been doing with AppStore

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:02 ericasadun

12:03

francis:

Well, we've been collecting data on trends and trying to find patterns in Apple's management of the AppStore

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:03 francis

12:04

francis:

A lot of this we feel is going to be extremely important to current iPhone developers and prospective ones

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:04 francis

12:05

francis:

Tom, that kind of information is not available to us, I urge you to contact the loopt developers, they should be able to provide you with a time frame

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:05 francis

12:06

ericasadun:

Francis was answering Tom

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:06 ericasadun

12:06

[Comment From TomTom: ]

Do you know when loopt will be available in the UK?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:06 Tom

12:07

ericasadun:

I think a lot of people want to know how the pricing structure shook out. A lot of people thought that free Applications would dominate. Did that happen?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:07 ericasadun

12:09

francis:

Actually, it appears that $0.99 applications have been dominating, for the past few days there's been a small competition going on between the Free tier and the $0.99 tier, today they are both tied 192 apps, but yesterday, the $0.99 tier had a clear lead

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:09 francis

12:10

francis:

$0.99 certainly looks like the sweet-spot, impulse buys are much more common at that tier, as much as we would like for free apps to dominate, the trend so far appears to be that the increase in the percentage of paid apps is proportional to the total number of apps released

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:10 francis

12:11

[Comment From NickNick: ]

In your statistics, did you analyze any sort of correlation between the COST of an App with the user ratings?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:11 Nick

12:13

francis:

Nick, we've done some preliminary work in that area but have not yet been able to collect enough data about ratings for it to be statistically relevant. However, I will say that people do seem to rate free apps much more leniently than they do paid ones, but there are quite a few expensive apps with high ratings as well. We will have this data in a few days and should be able to give you better answers then.

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:13 francis

12:14

[Comment From BrianBrian: ]

How many apps are in the store now, vice the first release of the app store?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:14 Brian

12:14

Have you bought apps at AppStore?
No

( 6% )

Only Free Ones

( 30% )

Free and Paid

( 63% )

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:14

12:15

francis:

There are now 805 apps in total, as opposed to around 500 on release day

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:15 francis

12:16

francis:

22 % apps were free then, 23% are free now, but for the most part the percentage of free apps has been slowly declining

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:16 francis

12:18

francis:

today there was a disproportionately large percentage of free apps released and this gave the "Free" category a big boost to tie with the $0.99 category

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:18 francis

12:19

francis:

on the 15th, two $450 apps were released, and we believe we're going to see many more of these apps targetting business/enterprise customers showing up

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:19 francis

12:19

ericasadun:

Next, I have two fairly related questions from TUAW reader Brian:

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:19 ericasadun

12:20

[Comment From BrianBrian: ]

Where do the majority of apps stand in price range?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:20 Brian

12:20

[Comment From ryanryan: ]

So far we have little to guage how many apps have actually been sold. Any idea how well apps are selling? Any numbers?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:20 ryan

12:20

ericasadun:

(Apologies: One Ryan, One Brian)

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:20 ericasadun

12:21

francis:

Brian: at the moment, $0.99 and $0.00 are the two most popular pricepoints

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:21 francis

12:23

francis:

Ryan: on launch day we could see download counts in the mobile AppStore, but this count disappeared suddenly within a few hours of the launch. However, if you are interested in comparing sales between 2 competing apps, you should search for the apps in iTunes, the "Popularity" value will allow you to compare them. We are working on ways to extract the numerical info as well.

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:23 francis

12:24

ericasadun:

The next question has to do with updates. I know a lot of developers have been griping that they cannot get their updated Apps through the Apple approval process. Here's John with a question

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:24 ericasadun

12:24

[Comment From johnjohn: ]

how long have you seen it typically take for an app to have an update approved?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:24 john

12:25

francis:

There doesnt seem to be a pattern there, some developers have had more success than others, there have been reports of some near-instant approvals, while others have been waiting for more than 2 days to get their updates listed

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:25 francis

12:26

ericasadun:

I know that I have some that have been waiting for weeks

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:26 ericasadun

12:26

ericasadun:

Reader Dylan wants to know if you've seen any apps that have changed prices. Have you seen pay apps go free or vice versa?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:26 ericasadun

12:27

ericasadun:

[Moderator note: Lee and Player 1 can you please re-submit your questions, Firefox just ate them]

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:27 ericasadun

12:28

francis:

We have, we've seen developers lowering prices in response to competition, but interestingly enough, we've seen a small number of apps going from "Free" to $0.99, where people who had installed them when they were free, were not allowed to install their updates without paying

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:28 francis

12:29

ericasadun:

Here are some comments from a few readers about exactly that:

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:29 ericasadun

12:29

[Comment From StevenSteven: ]

Yeah, the Jirbo ones went from free to paid, and Tetris dropped its price by about $2.

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:29 Steven

12:29

[Comment From SethSeth: ]

The BattleAtSea app went from $3.99 to $4.99 in a few hours after the App Store opened

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:29 Seth

12:29

[Comment From JamesJames: ]

I think the Jirbo apps have changed the price. At the start, they were free now, they have a price of 0,99

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:29 James

12:29

ericasadun:

Here's a philosophy question from reader Ismael B:

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:29 ericasadun

12:29

[Comment From Ismael B.Ismael B.: ]

What do developers who offer Apps for free in the App Store have to gain?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:29 Ismael B.

12:31

Do you buy more apps on iTunes on on the native AppStore?
iTunes

( 33% )

AppStore

( 42% )

About the same

( 25% )

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:31

12:31

francis:

That's a good question, considering that the developer program is not actually free ($99). Some developers have other business and other platforms, and having a free (albeit limited) version of their software on the iPhone helps give them exposure

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:31 francis

12:32

[Comment From GregGreg: ]

And what's Erica's take on the same question (Light)

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:32 Greg

12:32

francis:

While others such as AOL and the New York Times are large corporations who can afford donating developer man-hours in order to increase their userbase or their viewership

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:32 francis

12:33

ericasadun:

If I charged for Light, I'd be embarassed. The total line count for the first version was under 10 lines.

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:33 ericasadun

12:34

[Comment From poetic_follypoetic_folly: ]

Erica - small note, your apps weren't waiting for update, they were waiting for approval, correct?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:34 poetic_folly

12:34

ericasadun:

Actually, Light is waiting on it's updated version (way cooler)

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:34 ericasadun

12:34

ericasadun:

And several apps are stuck in approval but have updated versions that I can't submit

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:34 ericasadun

12:34

[Comment From BenBen: ]

Do you have a website with your findings?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:34 Ben

12:35

ericasadun:

[Moderator note: If we haven't gotten to your question, it's because we're receiving a *lot* of comments, not because we don't like you or your question.]

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:35 ericasadun

12:36

francis:

actually, yes we do, we've been working overtime trying to get the statistics in an easy to read format that we haven't had time to really put the finishing touches on the site, but by tomorrow hopefully it'll be exactly the way we want it: http://www.tip-review.com

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:36 francis

12:36

In your experience: Are the Apps that you've bought for $0.99 or more better than the free ones?
Yes

( 13% )

( 22% )

It depends

( 65% )

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:36

12:38

ericasadun:

Pinch Media has released several App Store RSS feeds (http://feeds.feedburner.com/RecentlyAddedIphoneApplications-PinchMedia, http://feeds.feedburner.com/RecentlyUpdatedIphoneApplications-PinchMedia, http://feeds.feedburner.com/Top100FreeIphoneApplications-PinchMedia, http://feeds.feedburner.com/Top100PaidIphoneApplications-PinchMedia). What are some other resources or tips for people who want to keep on top of App Store changes?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:38 ericasadun

12:39

[Image]

mode-price-per-cat.png View

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:39

12:42

francis:

We advise them to visit the tip-review.com over the coming days and weeks, we have much more planned, including a database of professional reviews of appstore apps on www.appstorereviews.net , as well as extensive RSS feeds that we hope will be invaluable to end users

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:42 francis

12:43

ericasadun:

Several readers ask: What have the most popular application categories been? And does this differ between paid and free apps?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:43 ericasadun

12:46

francis:

the most popular categories are the games and social networking categories (thanks to super monkeyball and AIM). Free apps seem to be doing a lot better than paid apps, but until we have concrete figures for sales/downloads we can't give you concrete answers

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:46 francis

12:49

[Comment From SergeySergey: ]

Is there any GNU/GPL application published in AppStore? Any potential legal incompatibility issues?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:49 Sergey

12:51

francis:

due to the NDA (non-disclosure agreement), opensource apps are not allowed in the iPhone Developer program, as they would provide information about the API's, which would be in violation of the NDA

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:51 francis

12:51

[Comment From BridgerBridger: ]

What happened to the download numbers available early on? Did anybody capture those?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:51 Bridger

12:53

[Comment From ryanryan: ]

Bridger, I wonder the same thing... I want them back

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:53 ryan

12:56

francis:

Not that I know of, I don't think anybody expected those numbers to disappear, but if memory serves, the most popular app on the first day was Super MonkeyBall, and just before the download counts disappeared it was at around 12,000 downloads, so that should give you an idea. As to whether or not we'll have them back, it's not clear, I know developers would love to have that data (certainly beats monthly reports).

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:56 francis

12:56

[Comment From EricEric: ]

Have you heard of any SSH app's coming to the App Store?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:56 Eric

12:56

ericasadun:

No, Eric.

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:56 ericasadun

12:56

francis:

Nope.

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:56 francis

12:56

ericasadun:

And it would be kind of hard to have one with Apple's restrictions

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:56 ericasadun

12:57

[Comment From DanDan: ]

What's apple's cut of the appStore proce? How much does the dev get per sale?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:57 Dan

12:57

ericasadun:

70%. Apple gets 30%

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:57 ericasadun

12:58

ericasadun:

A lot of you are asking questions about specific programs.

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:58 ericasadun

12:58

ericasadun:

Francis is working on analyzing the AppStore

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:58 ericasadun

12:58

ericasadun:

He doesn't have any insight into specific releases or Apple internal policy

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:58 ericasadun

12:59

ericasadun:

Francis, to wrap up, what are some of the biggest trends you saw in AppStore's first days? Where do you think things are moving to?

Thursday July 17, 2008 12:59 ericasadun

1:02

francis:

Some of the interesting trends we've seen: The developers with the most apps in the appstore have mostly submitted paid apps, except for Jirbo, which has an even 50-50 split. We've seen corellation between total number of apps released and the percentage of paid apps, and we've seen huge popularity in the $0.99 tier, which appears to be the sweet spot for developers and end users alike.

As a side note, I'd also like to thank Ding Sheng, Chris Brand, Casey Shobe, Steve Anderson, Kelly Krehbiel and Pepijn Oomen for working on these statistics with me.

Thursday July 17, 2008 1:02 francis

1:05

francis:

Our team is working around the clock to improve the website, we were rushing to get the stats available in time for the livechat, but hopefully by tomorrow afternoon we will have it the way we want it. The website is http://www.tip-review.com and we're planning on doing weekly analysis of AppStore data

Thursday July 17, 2008 1:05 francis

1:05

ericasadun:

I'm afraid we've run out of time today. If you'd like to learn more about the AppStore statistics that Francis has been working on, be sure to visit his site. Francis, thank you for taking the time today to chat with TUAW. And readers, thank you for stopping by to chat with us.

Thursday July 17, 2008 1:05 ericasadun

1:05

ericasadun:

Before we run off, here are a few quick answers that we didn't get to

Thursday July 17, 2008 1:05 ericasadun

1:06

ericasadun:

Dare: You can find new items by sorting in iTunes by date

Thursday July 17, 2008 1:06 ericasadun

1:06

ericasadun:

Jason: No one knows about Nullriver