Apple Computer announced today that their App Store had surpassed its 2 billionth download. As the article reporting the announcement observed, that's 6.6 million downloads a day. For 85,000 different applications. A major content pipeline of free and paid apps, produced by over 125,000 amateur and professional developers in more than 75 countries.
At the One Infinite Loop Building at Apple's Cupertino campus, past the security gate, near the coffee shop, is a big display showing what looks like an electronic mosaic. There is a small image, a "tile" for each App in the Apple App Store. Every time someone downloads an App, its tile blinks. As I watched, some tiles barely blinked at all, while others were glowing steadily thanks to the number of hits they received. It was pretty amazing, really gives you and idea of the scope and scale of what the App store phenomenon looks like in real time. (Parenthetically the heat generated by the display was noticeable enough that I moved to another table.)
The Apps phenomenon has completely defined the market differentiation for a successful mobile product launch. "There's an app for that" has become a part of popular culture. Even so, apps aren't the only mobile device differentiator. Choice of carrier still matters, a lot. Earlier today I was reading an e-Week article talking about how the Palm Pre may end up being the "Smartphone Flop of the Year" because they are yet to hit 1 million sales in sales, and Verizon seems to be getting cold feet about providing network services (which is one of those chicken-and-egg situations...frankly, I've been waiting for the Verizon announcement to buy a Pre. I expect I'm not the only person in that situation. Sprint is just not a dominant carrier in my part of the world.)
Lest you think my data is call coming from Apple friendly sources, I should tell you that one of my favorite sources for mobile web statistics is admob.com. For example - In July they surveyed over 1,000 of our iPhone, iPod touch and Android users to find out more about their interaction and download behavior with apps. The report is now available on the admob.com site. Here are some highlights:
• Android and iPhone users download approximately 10 new apps a month, while iPod touch owners download an average of 18 per month
• More than 90 percent of Android and iPhone OS users browse and search for apps directly on their mobile device instead of their computer
• Upgrading from the lite version was the top reason given when users were asked what drives them to purchase a paid app
• iPhone and iPod touch users are twice as likely to purchase paid apps than Android users.
• Users who regularly download paid apps spend approximately $9 on an average of five paid downloads per month.
The tug-of-war between Apple and Google over Google Voice has continued to keep me from switching from my Blackjack to get a new iPhone, but I don't think I am going to hold out much longer. The iPhone "App-eal" is just wearing me down. Any one of us who is interested in mobile experience needs to figure out why Apple iPhone members are such a disproportionately large percentage of the mobile internet.
...I'm sure there's probably a few apps for figuring that out.
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