App Store Hits 15,000 Apps, 500 Million Downloads

[Oxtail]

When I want an app, I do what I do when I want a new camera. I do a google search for reviews and comparisons. If I wanted a mp3 ripping program, I'd do the same. I thought that's how everyone did it? A few days ago I decided to get a dictionary so I did some searches. There were some great comparisons online of the various dictionaries available for the iPhone and that helped me make my choice.

People who complain about all the crap in the App Store and no quality apps must have lots of apps they paid over $10 for on their old phone, right? I'm curious which ones those are. Or perhaps the better answer is people are not as willing to drop $10-30 for apps on their *phone* and developers better realize that or they're destined to be left behind as other developers who give people what they want rake in the money.

The App Store is one of the most brilliant examples of a free market we have. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, but complaining because you don't like the rules of the free market or don't understand them isn't going to help you succeed.

 

[chaosconan]

That's weird.

None of my apps that I got from app store is on that page?
I only see 1. So, where is the rest. How did they pick the apps to put on that page. I have a hard time believing that those are the most popular apps thats being download.

 

[jbernie]

Very good achievement indeed!

PS: 20 negative comments? So many idiots? LOL

It is a positive that there is so much available but in saying that there are plenty of negatives to having so many apps that perform the same exact functions and also a delivery system which makes finding apps a chore of wandering through pages of search results of irrelevent content.

 

[Oxtail]

They gained 5000 Apps and 200 Million Sales in less than a Month in a Half. Wow.

Actually, for me, when I saw their last little announcement, I realized I had't downloaded any apps in a while so I went and got a bunch. I downloaded about 20 since, 14 of which were paid. So 20 out of that 200 Million was me! One of the free ones I got(Pandora - yes, I know I'm like 10 months behind on that one) I now use every single day for many hours at a time.

 

[Sky Blue]

That's weird.

None of my apps that I got from app store is on that page?
I only see 1. So, where is the rest. How did they pick the apps to put on that page. I have a hard time believing that those are the most popular apps thats being download.

Why? They're all popular websites and brands. Ebay, amazon, tetris, star wars, bejewled, new york times, yellow pages etc etc etc.

 

[ellsworth]

I wonder why Apple never mentions how much money they've made sitting there doing nothing and getting a large chunk of the income? Than again, we do have to give them some credit and money for maintaining everything. But still.

 

[farmboy]

I wonder why Apple never mentions how much money they've made sitting there doing nothing and getting a large chunk of the income? Than again, we do have to give them some credit and money for maintaining everything. But still.

See quarterly financials; other than that, why would they have to tell you how much money they're making on Apps?

"But still" what? Apple does a lot more than just "maintaining" everything: one-stop shopping, advertising, handling financial transactions, massive web site hosting---all things most of these developers couldn't hope to do on their own. Apple made *most* of these apps viable by setting up the App Store the way they did. Why are they not entitled to whatever they can make on all this? The consumer and the developers are getting great deals. No questions, some improvements in the store structure and searching would be nice, and I'm sure an iTunes update in the near future will make it so.

 

[iphonedevguy]

when will it hit 1B download ?

I had predicted in Dec that Apple will hit 25K apps, 1B downloads and 30M iphones by July 2009, but at this pace, it seems it will achieve the feat by April end !

Btw, 1 in 15 iphone users is purchasing an app daily.

Gung ho iphone developers !

 

[firewood]

I wonder why Apple never mentions how much money they've made sitting there doing nothing and getting a large chunk of the income?

What Apple offers is that they put their iTunes brand name on the store.
And they put the store on every iPhone and every iPod Touch.

Those 2 items together provide the average developer with probably a magnitude more revenue than the 30% that they take off the top. e.g. if the App store went away, and every developer had to sell stuff on their own web sites, or something like PalmGear, most wouldn't get 30% more, they'd very likely get 10X less in sales, it that. So they aren't doing nothing. They're influencing tons of revenue for most developers (just by sitting there, but hey that works for a lot of people with desk jobs).

.

 

[kdarling]

"But still" what? Apple does a lot more than just "maintaining" everything: one-stop shopping, advertising, handling financial transactions, massive web site hosting---all things most of these developers couldn't hope to do on their own.

O.M.G. However did we manage to buy and sell software for thirty long years before the App Store? Oh yeah, advertising online and in printed media and by using product websites.

Btw, now fast forward to the supposed push notification scheme. If you think people can't host a website to sell an app, how in the heck do you expect developers to host huge servers to send notifications to Apple's servers for every app that needs push?

Apple made *most* of these apps viable by setting up the App Store the way they did. Why are they not entitled to whatever they can make on all this?

Apple made sure they had no competition.

I have an idea. Let's see Apple allow OTHER stores to sell the apps (and put their stores on the phone)... and see where the royalties would end up under a free trade system.

 

[ellsworth]

See quarterly financials; other than that, why would they have to tell you how much money they're making on Apps?

"But still" what? Apple does a lot more than just "maintaining" everything: one-stop shopping, advertising, handling financial transactions, massive web site hosting---all things most of these developers couldn't hope to do on their own. Apple made *most* of these apps viable by setting up the App Store the way they did. Why are they not entitled to whatever they can make on all this? The consumer and the developers are getting great deals. No questions, some improvements in the store structure and searching would be nice, and I'm sure an iTunes update in the near future will make it so.

What Apple offers is that they put their iTunes brand name on the store.
And they put the store on every iPhone and every iPod Touch.

Those 2 items together provide the average developer with probably a magnitude more revenue than the 30% that they take off the top. e.g. if the App store went away, and every developer had to sell stuff on their own web sites, or something like PalmGear, most wouldn't get 30% more, they'd very likely get 10X less in sales, it that. So they aren't doing nothing. They're influencing tons of revenue for most developers (just by sitting there, but hey that works for a lot of people with desk jobs).

.

I see both of your points and I'm not saying apple shouldn't make any money from developers: I'm saying they're making a lot for having no part in the development of most of these apps. Apple can make A LOT of money just standing at the corner of a lemonade stand with their logo attached to it and have no part in squeezing the lemons if they wanted to. That 30% that apple is gaining. Is mostly for Apple being Apple. Apps can easily be sold on Amazon and many other places and still make a killing. You don't see Sony PS3 games being sold in ONLY one proprietary online store? Hmm. I know the App Store is Convenient and what not and I'm pretty sure that's why things are running smoothly. Convenience is the charge and nothing more.

 

[Fukui]

Incredible, except that most of them are poop.

 

[kdarling]

I love Gizmodo's "breakdown" of the apps:

What the 500 million downloads were of

 

[rockosmodurnlif]

When I want an app, I do what I do when I want a new camera. I do a google search for reviews and comparisons. If I wanted a mp3 ripping program, I'd do the same. I thought that's how everyone did it? A few days ago I decided to get a dictionary so I did some searches. There were some great comparisons online of the various dictionaries available for the iPhone and that helped me make my choice.

People who complain about all the crap in the App Store and no quality apps must have lots of apps they paid over $10 for on their old phone, right? I'm curious which ones those are. Or perhaps the better answer is people are not as willing to drop $10-30 for apps on their *phone* and developers better realize that or they're destined to be left behind as other developers who give people what they want rake in the money.

The App Store is one of the most brilliant examples of a free market we have. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, but complaining because you don't like the rules of the free market or don't understand them isn't going to help you succeed.

The crap apps are the ones you read the reviews for but didn't buy or the scores of apps that don't get reviewed.

People are willing to pay $10 - $30, like I said earlier, if there was a trial feature, not this "lite" app garbage, there would be better apps.

Which dictionary app did you end up getting?

 

[hazza.jockel]

If you look at the consumer software industry as a whole, lots of companies make big money selling stuff that costs more than $20. And a whole bunch of that is certainly not shareware or trialware (e.g. most game cartridges, etc.)

.

Yes but most games (for xbox etc) can be tried before you buy by renting them from the video store or a mate. I won't spend $100 on a game unless i have played it for a while before hand. This brings me to my idea of renting iphone apps.

Apps should be rented to be for a margin of the total cost. Once the renting period is over the user gets the option to buy or to leave it. If they leave it they don't get their money back but if they decide to buy it then they only have to pay the cost of the app minus the cost of renting the app. For example if you rent a 99c app for 25c when you go to buy it, it will only cost you 74c.

A $20 app could be rented for $2. The user gets to try before investing a lot of money and the dev/apple still make a profit. Everybody wins.

Stats of people who have rented but not bought would also help to show others the quality of the app.

 

[iMaggot]

I love apps, hell i download 1 a week

 

[one1]

App Store Hits 15,000 Apps

Once the iPr0N apps hit, it'll be 15,000,000

 

[one1]

A $20 app could be rented for $2. The user gets to try before investing a lot of money and the dev/apple still make a profit. Everybody wins.

Sorry, fail. You put an app that works on a non jailbroken, non hacked phone - then the phone itself clearly does not have to be modified to use the app. The only thing holding it back from being free for life is editing the source in the package and cracking would take on a whole new level as the game would be registered to you and your machine so it would hand shake with iTunes with no issues and WITHOUT JAILBREAKING. It would be free for all to crack the apps, not the phone. Any Joe could DL an app and remove the time limit with proper instructions from a hacker. Once you eliminate the issue that have held people back from doing it (people scared to have to do anything to their phone, rather than the IPA file you can DL 1,000 times if needed) then piracy goes into a whole new clientele.

The clusterkucf to follow would far outweigh todays cracking problems the devs face as people who do not want to void their wty jailbreaking no longer have to hack the phone to make cracked apps work (everything is done on the iTunes side in the IPA killing the time limit) and piracy goes through the ROOF.

 

[WPeterson]

that's why google android can't help promoting out its android marketplace...
but the copycat might be bad, i guess.

 

[hazza.jockel]

Sorry, fail. You put an app that works on a non jailbroken, non hacked phone - then the phone itself clearly does not have to be modified to use the app. The only thing holding it back from being free for life is editing the source in the package and cracking would take on a whole new level as the game would be registered to you and your machine so it would hand shake with iTunes with no issues and WITHOUT JAILBREAKING. It would be free for all to crack the apps, not the phone. Any Joe could DL an app and remove the time limit with proper instructions from a hacker. Once you eliminate the issue that have held people back from doing it (people scared to have to do anything to their phone, rather than the IPA file you can DL 1,000 times if needed) then piracy goes into a whole new clientele.

The clusterkucf to follow would far outweigh todays cracking problems the devs face as people who do not want to void their wty jailbreaking no longer have to hack the phone to make cracked apps work (everything is done on the iTunes side in the IPA killing the time limit) and piracy goes through the ROOF.

Ok if what you say is so easy to do then why don't people rent movies from itunes and "remove the time limit" and keep the movie. Then people would have a good free source for movies. Obviously there's more to renting movies then it seems.

I'm 100% certain that Apple could implement a way of renting apps with out people stealing them just as they have done with renting movies. Did you think about that before you printed a big FAIL across my idea?

 

[MacFly123]

I think that the apps will be better and better as time goes on now. The app store can only support so many crapy apps and after so many they will all drown each other out and we will see better quality ones gain the spotlight.

Keep it going Apple, this is one of the biggest differentiating features of the iPhone and every other phone

P.S. I also am in favor of a free trial method that would let me try an app and it would delete itself after a week or whatever. I think this would be very beneficial for the store and apps!!! There have been several times that I wanted to get some apps but wasn't going to pay the cost just to try them, but had I been given a trial run I probably would have made a purchase.

 

[JackSYi]

500 million??? At this point I can't imagine my iPhone without the third party apps.

 

[sphoenix]

I can't believe how unorganized the store is. I hate surfing it.

Tell me about it. I used to visit it daily and download-and-try at least 10 applications. But now, it seems that the over-rated 'funny' or 'awesome' apps make the Top 50 Paid & Free, and I may look at those one or twice during the week.

All types of developers have wanted in, which is good and bad. But Apple needs to start organizing because I know (out of those 15,000+ apps) there must be some damn-good applications out there, sitting in the dark. It's not fair.

 

[paja]

15,000 Applications

15,000 apps with 14,500 being absolute garbage. How many more Fart, Burp and Beer apps do we need.

Apple needs to reorganize the App Store with new sub categories to filter out these garbage apps like single dialers.

It's becoming a problem finding worthwhile application within the mounds of garbage.

 

[firewood]

1Apple needs to reorganize the App Store with new sub categories to filter out these garbage apps like single dialers.

I wonder whether there is a method behind this madness. e.g. a typical large grocery store will have junk magazines and candy up near the front, or by the checkout counter, because doing so clearly increases sales on an average day. Maybe not having automatic filters or organization to hide these $0.99 "ringtone apps" is causing measurably huge sales numbers for the App store. If so, what would be their incentive to do otherwise?

.