Thanks to a reader for asking this question: “Wouldn’t it be more telling to look at the monthly rate of downloads / device at any given time?”
Yes it would.
Here’s what can be derived based on download rates and installed base of devices.
How long before apps overtake physical video game content sales?
Jan 17, ’11
10:01 AM
After reviewing the payments to suppliers, we can look at the store’s revenue generation rate. With the same assumptions, we have the following chart:
We will have to wait for another report to see whether the recent burst of volume from apps is sustained[1], but the trend shows income from apps narrowing the gap to music.
More than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold
Jan 16, ’11
8:54 PM
The iTunes App Store is about to reach 10 billion downloads. That makes this a good time to revisit app growth metrics and compare them with the other digital media store that we have data for: the iTunes Music Store.
First, the download totals as time series[1]:
Apple has accepted nearly 400,000 apps in 2.5 years
Dec 27, ’10
5:31 PM
There are now well over 390,366 apps in the app store[1]
Since launch, December has been the month with the most apps added. In December 2008 3,800 apps were added, in 2009 25,517 and in 2010 it looks like we might get nearly 30k new apps.
That amounts to nearly 1000 new apps per day.
It also seems that 500k apps will have arrived by mid-2011. As the production of apps continues to grow one wonders if this new medium will turn out to become more popular than recorded music in terms of creative output.
[1] That includes about 65,000 inactive apps.
Nokia’s Ovi Store downloads hit 3 million a day
Nov 18, ’10
1:15 PM
More than 400 000 new developers in past 12 months; 92 developers each top 1 million download mark; 1.5 million downloads of Qt software development toolkits
via Nokia – Show Press Release.
See the following chart comparing Ovi with iTunes Music and iTunes Apps download rates.
