The Art of the App Store: The Business of Apple Development

EXAMINING THE NUMBERS AND TRENDS

According to a May 2011 online collaboration (www.facebook.com/500kapps) by Chomp (an application search engine, located at www.chomp.com), 148Apps (a website at www.148apps.com that spotlights iOS applications), and Chillingo (an independent game publisher and division of Electronic Arts located at www.chillingo.com), the following was noted:

• In late May 2011, Apple approved its 500,000th app on all its current platforms (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad).
• As of September, 2011, the number of active apps available for download was roughly 500,000.
• There are roughly 86,000 unique developers.
• Of all apps, roughly 40 percent are free! There is a big push toward free and freemium (see Chapter 7).
• The average price of a paid app is $3.64, which seems on par from a plateau over the past couple of years, and reflects a sharp drop from an initial price of around $6 back in mid-2008.
• The average number of apps per developer is 4.6.
• The category distribution over time has stayed fairly constant from 2008 until today, with the big five categories accounting for 54 percent of all apps (Games at 16 percent, Books at 13 percent, Entertainment at 11 percent, Education at 7 percent, and Lifestyle at 7 percent). All other categories combined to account for roughly 46 percent.

Table 3-1 (courtesy of 148apps.biz) shows the most popular App Store categories, ranked by number of apps within the category. Of course, if you're reading this well past publication, these ...