Massive Christmas iPod Touch Sales Boost App Store Downloads

[MacRumors]

Apple's new iPod Touch appears to have been a huge hit this holiday season with evidence that the high end iPod has seen massive gains in marketshare.

The first impact was seen in early sales numbers for App Store applications on Christmas day. The #1 ranked App Store application (iFart Mobile) saw a tripling of sales from 13,000 units a day to almost 39,000 units on Christmas day. This growth in sales, however, was not just isolated to the #1 spot and was seen across the entire App Store. Several game developers on TouchArcade.com reported sales boosts of 3x-4x across all titles, even for titles not in the top 100 listings.



Sales for Hit Tennis

Hit Tennis [App Store] developer Mark Johnson reported a 4x sales increase on Christmas for his tennis game and provides this striking graph (above).

The massive boost in App Store sales appears to be from a large influx of iPod Touch users. Amazon lists the 8GB and 16GB iPod Touch as the best selling MP3 players despite their relatively higher cost. Meanwhile a little creative exploring of Net Application's Hitslink website reveals the following web marketshare graph for the iPod Touch:



iPod Touch browser marketshare

The graph shows real time marketshare data for the iPod Touch which showed a massive spike on Christmas day. While there is a slight increase in the iPhone graph, the majority of the Christmas growth appears to be with the iPod Touch. This trend, of course, reflects the difficulties in gifting an iPhone vs an iPod touch.

Apple has been marketing the iPod Touch as more than just an MP3 player with a specific focus on gaming. If these trends are true, then some of the boost in App Store downloads should be sustained as it reflects actual marketshare growth rather than just increased spending surrounding the holidays.


Article Link: Massive Christmas iPod Touch Sales Boost App Store Downloads

[Eddyisgreat]

Figures (no pun intended)

I wonder how many of those unsellable 9.99 games/apps hit 3x downloads too.

[LillieDesigns]

Tower Defense games have been eating away my time this entire week.

I've yet to find the best one...

[jarofclay73]

So, it's been these iPod Touch owners buying all these stupid fart apps. Make MORE games not compatible with the Touch! Just kidding...

[econoline06]

So much for those stupid analysts predictions that iPods were not in favor anymore....

[macbookairman]

Originally Posted by LillieDesigns

Tower Defense games have been eating away my time this entire week.

I've yet to find the best one...

i think besiegement is pretty good.

[VanMac]

Cool stats. I'm looking to get one instead of an iPhone, as I have an existing cell phone contract....

[DMann]

Originally Posted by econoline06

So much for those stupid analysts predictions that iPods were not in favor anymore....

FUD. This is really all that anal-ysts are really good for.

[nfl46]

Facebook is #4. That's the highest it has ever been, surprisingly. The developer has YET to fix the bugs in it though, and its been nearly 3 months since the last update. Its really pathetic if you ask me. 4/5 start rating, over 20,000+ ratings, #4 most downloaded app, and the developer cannot fix the bugs in the Facebook app.

[Toe]

Originally Posted by LillieDesigns

Tower Defense games have been eating away my time this entire week.

I've yet to find the best one...

TapDefense has the right price.

[calvy]

I've got to learn to program for the iPhone. If freaking iFart can bring in that much cash, surely there's a little spare change to be made in something that's actually useful.

[dizzy13]

Oh crap!!! More good apple news? Stock is going to hit 80 tomorrow

[trainguy77]

Originally Posted by dizzy13

Oh crap!!! More good apple news? Stock is going to hit 80 tomorrow

Why do you think it will go down? If anything i think it will hit 90.

[justbn]

Our traffic stats for AppBeacon.com confirm this trend as well. We saw a significant rise in worldwide traffic beginning on the 24th. I Twittered that it appeared lots of people had been gifted iPhones and iPod Touches.

[dizzy13]

Originally Posted by trainguy77

Why do you think it will go down? If anything i think it will hit 90.

I was kind of joking around because the stock market sucks and doesn't make sense. It should go up and hopefully it will, but I'm not holding my breath...at the least I hope it doesn't fall.

[happymom]

I have two preschool education apps. One game had a boost of 33 percent but the other game had 30 percent less downloads. So I guess it was a draw for me. But I'm optimistic that sales will go up now that people have received iPods for xmas and also expect to see a boost when Walmart starts to sell the iPhone.

[trainguy77]

Originally Posted by dizzy13

I was kind of joking around because the stock market sucks and doesn't make sense. It should go up and hopefully it will, but I'm not holding my breathe...at the least I hope it doesn't fall.

haha my bad. I am pretty confident that they will go up this week. Not a lot but a little. As walmart also started selling iphones today.

[rockosmodurnlif]

iFart Mobile? Ridiculous. Yes I am hating. Hating hardcore.

Originally Posted by nfl46

Facebook is #4. That's the highest it has ever been, surprisingly. The developer has YET to fix the bugs in it though, and its been nearly 3 months since the last update. Its really pathetic if you ask me. 4/5 start rating, over 20,000+ ratings, #4 most downloaded app, and the developer cannot fix the bugs in the Facebook app.

Agreed. I didn't start noticing the bugs until these past two weeks and they've been increasing in frequency.

Hope none of those people are making the mistake of buying Tetris.

[sgntscrawn]

Originally Posted by econoline06

So much for those stupid analysts predictions that iPods were not in favor anymore....

Heh, yeah, yet people still listen to them, even here...

As for the touch being a gaming device, I'm totally in with that. As an owner of both a touch and an iPhone the better battery life has made my touch the gaming device. And so many of the games are really cool!

It would be interesting to see comparisons between the touch and the nintendo ds in terms of sales

[psycoswimmer]

I can attest to this growth in sales on a local scale. Nearly all my friends have an iPod touch now, and about 7 got one for Christmas. The old(er) iPod touch is still a viable option as well, as one of my friends got a 1G 16GB iPod touch for cheap.

[drwatz0n]

Massive is correct. I was at a large indoor track invitational yesterday, and I cannot believe how many iPod touches I saw. Of the twenty-thirty schools at the meet, I saw at least 100 touches around the venue all day. While this may not seem like a lot, compared to last month when maybe a handful had the device, I would say this is a massive increase.

[kmcrawford]

I too saw sales of my apps double on Christmas day.

[MarkMS]

Originally Posted by dizzy13

Oh crap!!! More good apple news? Stock is going to hit 80 tomorrow

Haha, that's true. It seems that anytime Apple gets some good news, the stock plummets.

[chrismcdowell25]

Funny the things people said when apple first got into the iPod business. Now it's the most popular MP3 player.

"All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field™ is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off."

"I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently!
Why oh why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!"

"There are already two products similar to this on the market. The Nomad Jukebox and the Archos Jukebox which can come with a 20 gig HD. The iPod is obviously alot cooler and has firewire, but it is far from revolutionary. I for one am disappointed and think that apple is making a mistake by trying to get into this market."

http://digg.com/apple/Why_the_iPod_w...read_from_2001

[Mjmar]

Always great to hear