iOS french sales

[North Bronson]

I'm working on a project and we have been talking about localizing things over to different languages (other than English) and French seemed to be our first choice.

This is, unfortunately, a business decision, so we need to weigh the value added against the cost of professional translation work.

Do any of you have an app on sale localized in French -- not just the App Store description, but all the strings used in your app?

How would you describe your sales? Our best countries are Australia, Canada, US and UK. Could you compare your sales in France to your sales in one of those countries?

 

[spinyanteater]

Why did you choose French? It seems a strange first choice, unless you are thinking of expanding your Canadian sales. Why not Spanish, which has far more speakers?

 

[firewood]

In what non-English-speaking country do apps sell the best after localization?

My apps have zero non-American-English localization. But I spite of that, I still sell about half as many apps in the EU as in the US, and usually at least one EU country beats out Canada or Australia in my monthly sales per country. But not that many sales from France. I did get a number of reviews for my apps in the French App store though.

 

[North Bronson]

Why did you choose French? It seems a strange first choice, unless you are thinking of expanding your Canadian sales. Why not Spanish, which has far more speakers?

One main reason is that, from what I can tell, the iTunes store does not localize your app description to Spanish for Latin America -- the only country that will see your Spanish description is Spain (but I could be wrong about that).

I just figured that, in terms of value-added, localizing the store description (but *not* the app itself) was worth more sales than localizing the app itself without the store description. Localizing both should hopefully be the best choice.

For a first try at (paying for) localization, I think French might give a good idea of what kind of results (sales) we could see.

 

[mccannmarc]

http://www.nicemice.net/amc/tmp/lang-pop.var#speakers

That should help you to decide...

 

[North Bronson]

In what non-English-speaking country do apps sell the best after localization?

My apps have zero non-American-English localization. But I spite of that, I still sell about half as many apps in the EU as in the US, and usually at least one EU country beats out Canada or Australia in my monthly sales per country. But not that many sales from France. I did get a number of reviews for my apps in the French App store though.

Our best non-Anglophone country has been the Nederlands. In fact, sales were so strong that I wonder about the value-added of localization.

What kind of apps are you selling? Are they primarily text-driven or graphic-driven? The project I'm working on is built around text, so localization might benefit an app like this more.

 

[firewood]

That should help you to decide...

Population data may or may not have any correlation against iPhone purchases or how many people use iTunes and buy stuff.

There are a lot of people in counties where iPhones are not sold. There are claims that most people in a few countries don't buy most of the apps that appear to be installed on their devices.

Similar to another poster here, a few Northern EU countries appears to be buying my apps well out of proportion to the population data.

Don't know why yet...

 

[bredell]

Around 2/3 of the people living in France don't understand english at all and less than 10% speak english fluently, so if you want to sell your app in France you really need to translate it.

 

[bboyjayz]

I'm french (livin in France) maybe i can help you.
Can you repeat what you want to know please ? (my english isn't perfect )

 

[North Bronson]

I'm french (livin in France) maybe i can help you.
Can you repeat what you want to know please ? (my english isn't perfect )

I was looking for someone who is selling an application on the iTunes Store and the application is written for both English users and French users.

If an application is written in French, I want to know how much the sales are. Right now, my company is selling an application written in English and the French sales are low.

 

[bboyjayz]

if you want to have a lot of sell in france... the only way is to have a news about you'r app in all website about the iphone.
But one thing is sure : number of sell in france is very smaller than english application (because of the population etc ... ) For example, i've created an application, into the TOP 100 of app in france (61st) and the number of download per day was 2000 (approximatively) and my app is free...if you're app isn't free...it's very complicated to have good stat...

i hope my answer will help you