THE APP STORE: 6 Years Later ... a Hard Game and GETTING HARDER (8)

THE APP STORE: 6 Years Later ... a Hard Game and GETTING HARDER

Adapted from http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/10/the...x-years-later/

Apple‘s App Store turns six today, and now offers consumers over 1.2 million apps, which have been downloaded 75 billion times, according to the most recent official data shared by the company.

But the business can sometimes be tough for app developers, and new numbers out this morning from two different analytics companies help prove this point. More than 21 percent of the apps that entered the App Store since its debut are now “dead,” notes one firm, while another is seeing a trend it calls “app burnout” now emerging.

Dead Apps & Burnout

Unlike the days of boxed software, app developers today don’t have to just make sales. They have to find and retain loyal users, keep engagement high, consider a variety of revenue models including also mobile advertising and in-app purchases, and work to maintain a highly ranked position in the App Store’s charts, which are managed by sometimes inscrutable and ever-changing algorithms.



Meanwhile, the App Store continues to grow, with as many as 60,000 new apps added monthly. Adjust sees no sign of that slowing down. The company predicts by App Store’s 7th birthday, another 578,000 apps will have been added to its ranks.

And by January 2016, it expects that another 952,977 will have gone live.

Those numbers seem about right. Based on figures Apple itself has previously shared, the App Store’s growth has not yet begun to taper off. The company added 250,000 iOS applications to the store from 2012 to 2013, in between its annual WWDC announcements. The year before, it had added 225,000 applications (between 2011 and 2012), and before that, some 200,000 new apps had arrived.

There are now some 9 million registered developers building for iOS, up 47 percent over last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said. Last year, the company did $10 billion in sales, and through its revenue-sharing agreements with developers, has paid out $15 billion to date. Consumers are downloading 800 apps per second, Apple says, with over 75 billion downloads to date.

60,000 new apps a month, damn. That is a competitive industry, has anyone been successful with apps on the forum? I know a few guys have been launching lately but that seems so competitive

I wonder how many of these apps actually do any marketing at all, are there any stats on that available?

Even if they all do marketing, seriously, there is limited space on my phone. There is no way any average person will have more than 50 apps max on their phones. I use my phone a lot, but even I don't use more than 10 apps regularly.

cmdeal,

Have you tried ASO with any of your apps?

I have one app doing decently on iOS 500-700 downloads a day (freemium model). I found you can boost rankings by getting family / friends to rank the app using different accounts on diff IP's. Also mentioning certain keywords within reviews can help you rank as well. I think a lot of the traditional SEO approaches still work but they hard part is the engagement element of the ranking algorithm, most people try and beat this by sending out push notifications to get users back into the app.

Shitty thing is Apple will never kill off these "Zombie Apps" cause as long gets on stage at every keynote. "Yes people, 2 billion fucking apps, this number is enormous, we are so proud of this here at Apple" - Tim Cook lol. Its not about quality as it is a scoreboard game come WWDC time. 96 % of the apps are the app store are garbage, but they screw the rankings up for the 4% that actually make quality apps.

Yeah, it's getting hard as hell. I don't publish on Apple's App Store, but on GP, and if you make games, the competition got too hard for indie devs. If you don't do any promo, it's virtually impossible to get any downloads. You need to buy fake reviews, fake downloads, and run legit ads on AppBrain - only then do you stand some chance to get noticed. But for this, you need at least 1.000-1.500 USD promo budget per app. All the biggest players are faking ratings/downloads like crazy. It's absurd, but it's an "open secret", exposed multiple times on authority websites, and nobody seems to mind.

However, I also publish more simple type of apps, which are still doing very good, and I'm banking over 10k USD per month. But you can't rely on apps as the only source of income - it's waaay to risky. You need to make only one mistake on GP, and you can get banned for life and all the income is gone overnight. Bigger players can get away with murder, but indie devs get detected and punished right away, even for small and unintentional mistakes.

I'm playing by the rules (reading ToS and Program Policies like the Bible) and thankfully I'm OK so far.

It's not surprising that you need a decent advertising budget to commit to new apps to see any traction.

A new business start-up that offers custom branded travel coffee mugs for business people is unlikely to be successful by virtue of having a shop tucked away in an alley near to Wall street. They would certainly advertise their existence to a relevant audience.

@Zeno: That's true, but less than a year ago, you didn't need any type of advertising. You just published a decent app, got the keywords right, had a few positive reviews from friends and family, and that was it. I have an app which has 2.500-3.000 downloads per day and I didn't spend a cent promoting it. 2-3 years ago it was even better - virtually everyone who published an OK app on App Store or GP was guaranteed to make a profit from it.

There is still good money to be made with apps, but if someone is starting out right now (with not even one app published), they should stay away from games, or have a BIG advertising budget prepared. I have a friend who is re-skinning games for almost 2 years now (exclusively for App Store) and he makes enough money (about 1k USD per day) to advertise big time. How can an indie compete with that?

The "secret" for indies is to release many, many simple apps (like for example horoscope love match, menstrual calendar, niche wallpapers, niche ringtones, etc.) and stay away from games. If you make apps for Android, you can also publish those apps on many alternative app stores, like Samsung App, Amazon, Opera, Mobango, Mobile1, Yandex,...

If you can adapt, you can still prosper.