The number of applications for the iPhone which reached the top 100 songs of the rankings of the U.S. Apple App Store has decreased by 35%, according to a study we completed pursuant Search Xyologic. In April 2011, 422 applications have gone in the top 100 free iPhone applications, while in April 2012, 277 applications that made the cut.
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We call new EC classification to continue on Sinks from 58 to 33. Comparing 6497 THIS new iPhone apps free to April 2011 over 11,545 new iPhone applications AND Free in April 2012. Pendant will be together, you name the Top 100 who reach further without rankings store in the U.S. to close LITTLE Playing In Google removed the same choice, though on a smaller scale A.
The following table present study on his resume – you name it continue in the top 100 free apps and Des Their age year after the respective year (April 2011 vs April 2012) to the liver to the App Store Apple and Google Conference USA Unisn this ranking has sunk from 58 to 33. This compares with 6497 new free iPhone applications in April 2011 and 11 545 new free iPhone application in April 2012. During the same time, the number of requests that reach the top 100 rankings free in the U.S. shop Playing Google remained about the same thing, albeit on a smaller scale.
The following table provides a summary of the study – the number of requests in the top 100 free applications and their respective age year after year (April 2011 vs April 2012) for both the Apple App Store and Google Playing U.S.
Number of Apps and Their Age in the Top Free 100 – April 2011
Number of Apps and Their Age in The Top Free 100 – April 2012
What can we conclude from the data? Our results can be seen as another sign of the maturation of the platform, such as Kim-Mai Cutler said recently. Due to the way Apple App Store is designed, once the application is broken into lists of the best that one can be seen by real users, it gets a huge increase in downloads per day. There are different arguments to facts about Apple’s role in this system.
He is responsible for a smaller number of new (indie) applications and developers of Apple entering the ranking of the best free? Apple’s role to provide exposure of the “small” children? Interventions with well-documented in the Apple market over the last 12 months has favored the “big” guys?
Or were the “big fish” only able to use the dynamics of the App Store on your own behalf? You receive these letters to the editor “too” hard, making publishers “should” buy their way to acquiring users? I think these questions, while valid, are not important for the industry in general. The current model of the discovery and acquisition of user content on the Apple App Store is still better than the editors have managed to cope in the history of the mobile industry.
Acquisition of mobile users rose by a number of different times since he was a product manager of AdMob’s largest publisher in 2007, only peperonity mobile social network. In each period, the competitive balance, the key success factors, and opportunities in the market has changed and change the status quo.
I think the history of space can be divided into three “ages” of their business model based on the hit in 2008: first, the emergence of open mobile web, on the other hand, the Application of emerging economies, the third increase in the distribution model and analysis of payment.
User Acquisition in the era of the operator ecosystem until 2007
Although mobile has never been hotter with the increase of IOS and Android, which would never be expected to produce until 2007. Until then, mobile operators were the kings of the mobile phone industry: The mobile content industry and other industry suppliers of other shows lined to try to show their products at any direction operator who would listen. Phone users in the U.S. have been mostly using the portals of mobile operators / covered when they wanted to access the mobile Internet. Therefore new mobile content companies will attend the meeting after meeting to ensure that “make the offer from Verizon” or “deal with Vodafone” and often ask consumers to prepay for mobile content and give companies a large part of society.
The emergence of the Open Mobile in 2008
In 2008, cracks of this system began to appear. Increasingly, mobile users are mobile Internet access in the U.S. via browsers, driven by the emergence of MySpace and Facebook on the mobile.
In April 2008, Mike Arrington and Loopt TC cover the launch of a hype around mobile at the beginning of the valley. A growing number of employers were asked how to benefit from the trend. As these entrepreneurs have launched their new businesses, in turn, seeks to find the marketing strategies that will help guide the consumer, bypassing the operator. The concept of acquisition “Open Mobile” user has entered the mobile arena especially, Admob was on the receiving end of this trend. A significant percentage of revenue growth in 2008 came new, with many new businesses based on the VC-mobile content entering the arena. The industry went to the races they seemed.
The booming economy of the request
It is easy to forget that the financial crisis hit the U.S. economy in the fall of 2008 and rumors abounded of a slowdown in mobile advertising. A large number of mobile publishers are withdrawn from the market of mobile advertising, web-based and many venture capitalists make their investments in mobile consumer expectations.
It was not until the launch of the iPhone that someone saw dollar signs on your mobile.
Mobile application developers, VC-backed start-up by the advertisers jumped on the platform after Apple’s App Store launched, such as requests for AdMob ads in network performance.
Iryna Newman, Head of Mobile Marketing at Groupon: “A big reason for optimized monetazation in apps is that apps finally solved the problem of user authentication, transaction history and payments. For example, within an app, you only have to log in once and provide your credit card information… you’re then stress-free every time you come back and all your transactions will be seamless.=
With mobile web, cookies are still unreliable and users often face obstacles as they try to sign up, purchase or complete everyday actions, having to remember their passwords and constantly re-enter credit card information. For the most part, mobile web users are having a frustrating experience.”
Back in November 2008, more than a year after the iPhone launch, Jason Spero (then the VP of Marketing at Admob) told me: “The iPhone market is exploding, Inventory is growing and advertisers are hungry for it.” Two drivers pushed revenues up at some ad networks that were tuned into the changes — specifically AdMob and Quattro Wireless. Above all, user acquisition based apps hit it off: Publishers of new mobile applications started paying other publishers every time a user clicked on their ad to download their applications. Second, brand advertisers sought to reach iPhone users as they surfed more frequently on their applications. Quattro was particularly good with these.
As the year unfolded, a new mobile platform gained traction on AdMob’s network: Android. By March 2010, Android surpassed the iPhone in terms of available inventory in the advertising market, accounting for a greater share of smartphone-served ads in the United States.
These days, the vast majority of U.S. mobile ad spend is in native mobile apps and not the mobile web. To web purists it may be surprising that developers continue to release thousands of native mobile apps each month. However, as U.S. advertisers continue to focus on advertising in apps and not the web and apps is where the monetisation of “free” mobile content in the U.S. is at.
A Note On Virality in mobile
One of the most common misconceptions of developers who entered mobile in recent years was their notions around the viability of “viral strategies” in mobile. Traditionally viral strategies that aresuccessful on the web had been destined to fail in mobile.
Some have argued that Kik’s early success was viral. However it was actually due to a clever use of the address book and invites and not viral in the strictest sense of the word. Not surprisingly this strategy got copied a lot, that it is until Path’s Addressbookgate more than a year later put an end to that.
An exception to the argument that “viral does not work in mobile” can be made around in-game mechanics in apps, specifically games.
The Rise Of The Paid Distribution Model & Analytics
The key ingredient for the emergence of the paid distribution model is the discovery that the most successful apps and especially some of the top mobile games were monetizing at impressive rates. Known economics has important implications. Developers now had apps where the cost of acquiring users through paid channels was less than the projected lifetime value of those acquired users. The revenue from these apps was used to subsidize the development and marketing of other titles in those publishers’ portfolios. They could continuously improve their apps using analytics.
While this approach has been known to social gaming, it’s been new to mobile.
Behind this a new set of mobile monetization and offer companies rose to the fore, particularly Tapjoy and Flurry.
The heyday of the associated practices so far was, probably, March 2011. In that month, Tapjoy was making more revenue than Admob, according to various sources I talked to.
How I Interpret The Data Of Our Study – This Trend Has Clear Winners And Losers
What that has meant is – and this is how I interpret the findings of our study – targeting and marketing spending has become far less efficient on iOS over the past few months. Says Christian Henschel, CEO of mobile monetisation company Adeven: “It is still very challenging for app developers and publishers to generate new (valuable) users. Banner advertising is not really working as costumer acquisition costs – specifically cost per downloads – have become very cost intensive.”
Michael Oiknine, CEO of mobile analytics company Apsalar, adds: “With the increasing number of apps in the market, the challenge for app developers and marketers is to not only get discovered, but also to drive engagement, retention, and monetization from their users.”
Alex Rosen, Director of Business Intelligence at Japanese gaming giant GREE, agrees: “It’s still very hard to uncover actual user demographics and therefore more challenging to direct marketing spend. The ability to better understand user bases and figure out the best analytical tools to make that happen is where the industry is going. There are great opportunities for developers, platforms, and advertising companies as analytic tools improve.”
In April 2011 Apple cracked down on the practice of incentivized pay-per-install, where developers offer their apps in other games and pay for downloads when players install their titles for virtual currency. Earlier this year Apple went against bots that have been used for well over a year to download apps until they reach the top of the charts where they can be seen by real users.
Then the cost to acquire users for mobile apps declined last month as ad networks and other channels scrambled to find a replacement for UDIDs, according to Fiksu. “As we’ve discussed in depth over the past several months, Apple’s planned phase-out of the UDID has resulted in significant confusion across the iOS app community. During this time of uncertainty, some marketers are looking more closely at Google Play to fuel their continued growth in mobile. And while we’d never suggest that the iOS market be ignored, Android’s Google Play offers a very compelling opportunity that can benefit app businesses in exceptional new ways” says Viki Zabala, Director of Marketing at Fiksu.
Iryna Newman, Head of Mobile Marketing at Groupon: “Imagine that there are only 50 spots on the front shelf at a department store. If you manage to get on that front shelf, you are guaranteed tens of thousands of high-quality “organic” buyers per day. And there is a clear path of getting there: get as many downloads as possible and get more than the next guy. The simplicity of this algorithm, fierce competition for the same rank spots and the powerful lift it provides, forced the whole mobile space to become very creative: from incentivized downloads to bot-farms. Rank in the App Store became the single most powerful marketing tool for all iOS developers, and under pressure of everyone competing for the same spots, developers became desperate for ways to boost their rank.”
Says Deng-Kai Cheng, Co-founder of a productivity stealth startup: “While supply is up, overall paid distribution volume has been flat relative to user growth, and prices have stayed consistently high and will likely continue to go up. This is driven on the demand side mainly by two advertiser sources: game developers that can usually justify the high CPA, and big brands or VC backed startups that are flush with capital and are willing to pay the high prices. As paid distribution becomes more and more difficult on iOS, discovery will continue to increasingly become a game of winners and losers. It thus becomes a self fulfilling cycle for large developers. They have a large install base to cross promote new apps from and they have the cash flow to pay the high prices for distribution.“
Alex Rosen, Director of Business Intelligence at GREE, is more optimistic: “I think it’s becoming less about driving the most users and more about finding the right users and although it’s doable, it is still not an easy process. The analytics are getting there but still need to evolve to meet the needs of the changing market. “
Mobile Platform Competition Is Good For Mobile Publishers
On the face of it iOS is still – by a wide margin – more lucrative per user than Android or Facebook,according to data from analytics provider Flurry and top-tier developers like EA Popcap.Revenues on iOS have grown considerably year over year.
But a smaller amount of developers benefiting from it must be concern for Apple.
In sheer reach for user – measured in monthly app downloads – Android is already considerably outpacing iOS.
In a publisher world of reduced efficiency of distribution and raised costs, Apple is creating a flaw in its ecosystem that hopefully will not grow with time.
Publishers, either way, should continue to be bullish about creating mobile content. For the first time in history they can truly rely on competition between platforms – especially from Android andAmazon – to be a major incentive for all players that drives discovery and marketing of their content forward.
As U.S. regulators and lawmakers push to see more privacy policies take hold in the mobile apps space, it appears app developers (and their lawyers) are taking note. Between September 2011 and June 2012 the Future of Privacy Forum think tank found a big spike in the percentage of top-selling apps sold for Apple and Google devices that incorporate privacy policies for user data, according to a new study.