Findings In The World Of Apps
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
We’ve seen a couple of recent reports on the topic of apps and Smart Phones that we thought were worth sharing.
First of all, a new study conducted by Chetan Sharma Consulting, Issaquah, Washington, on behalf of mobile applications download service GetJar, San Mateo, California, states that mobile apps will outsell CDs by 2012
The study forecasts that app downloads will increase from current annual levels of more than 7 billion to nearly 50 billion by 2012 – when their US$17.5 billion revenue would overtake that of the $13.8 billion of CDs.
And San Francisco-based Flurry, which offers, deployment and monetization tools for mobile application developers, and tracks over 20,000 live applications and over 2 billion user sessions each month, notes that, since the App Store launched in July, 2008, 35,000 unique companies have released applications, which translates to 58 new companies launching apps each day.
Flurry has been tracking apps for the iPhone compared to apps for Facebook since each were launched, making comparisons in the same time frames (eg. in the first nine months, etc., for each). In January, 2010, in terms of growth, the number of iPhone apps was reported to have exceeded 140,000 compared to the 60,000 it estimated Facebook had reached over its first 18 months.
As well, through applications using Flurry for analytics reporting, Flurry can detect and count unique devices in the market such as Google Nexus One and Motorola Droids. Because applications embedded with Flurry have been downloaded to over 80% of all iPhone OS and Android devices, Flurry is able to make reliable estimates about total handset sales.
Its finding: despite that fact that the Google Nexus One is the most advanced Android handset to date and enjoyed heavy marketing, its sales are much lower than expected. Based on the first 74 days of sales of each from their launch, the Droid had 1.05 million sales; the iPhone had 1 million; and the Nexus One, only 0.135 million. (The Droid was launched during the holiday period, one of several reasons believed to account for its fast high sales.)
And Apple announced this week that it will include a dedicated ‘iPad’ app category in the App Store.
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