Posts tagged with "app store"

The (Big) Numbers Apple Touted At Their iPhone Event

At yesterday’s iPhone event, Tim Cook took to the stage and as he has done at previous events, he gave the audience an overview of Apple’s business. He ran through various statistics of how the iPhone, iPad, Mac and other aspects of Apple’s business are doing. The numbers he gave were clearly chosen very carefully to shine the best possible light on Apple and were an important premise to the first Apple keynote in which he presides as CEO. But regardless of how carefully chosen, its clear that Apple is doing exceptionally well, virtually across its entire business.

We’ve reviewed the keynote and laid out all the key statistics he showed off into each of Apple’s product categories, so make sure to jump the break to view them all.

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In-App Purchase Revenue Growing as Developers Adopt “Freemium” Model

Many developers build iOS software hoping that their app will be the next Angry Birds, but they struggle at what price to sell it. A free app can bring downloads but your pockets are still empty. Maybe you should consider adding in-app purchases to your app, no matter the base price. Distimo has released a new report that suggests that in-app purchases are the way to go if you want to make money in the App Store. In-app purchases account for 72% of revenue, improving from 28% at this time last year. Here’s another stunning number, only 4% of apps in the App Store even offer in-app purchases.

Freemium apps (free to download, but require an in-app purchase to expand the app) are growing particularly faster in the in-app purchasing paradise. Free app downloads have increased by 34% since 2010 while paid downloads only grew 7% in the same time frame. Distimo’s research only covered the Top 200 in each category, but that’s a strong selection of the App Store’s money makers.

Freemium apps made up 48% of total App Store revenue while paid apps with in-app purchases accounted for 24%; the remaining 28% came from paid apps. If you look at the top grossing apps for the iPhone (iPod Touch) and iPad App Stores, freemium games take up several spots. Freemium apps also account for 65% of the Top 100 grossing games in the US App Store.

Besides games offering in-app purchases, comic apps are also making waves, especially in the iPad App Store. Magazines are one more category that is taking advantage of the freemium pricing model.

GigaOM didn’t envision this exactly back in February when Apple let in-app subscriptions into the stores. “Essentially, it looks like more and more developers are embracing the idea that making recurring payments an attractive option for App Store shoppers is the key to coming up with a sustainable business model. Apple’s isn’t the only store where developers are figuring that out, either. In-app purchases are already in use by 68 percent of the 25 top grossing Android apps, despite only being introduced in March of this year.”

Could we possibly see the day when there aren’t “regular” paid apps in the Top 300 grossing list? What do you prefer as a user – a one-time fee to buy the entire app, or having to keep putting quarters into your Apple arcade machine? [via GigaOM]

Smartphone Games “Front and Center” at Tokyo Game Show 2011→

Smartphone Games “Front and Center” at Tokyo Game Show 2011

Wired has an overview of what’s going at Tokyo Game Show – annual exposition of Japanese videogames – this year: smartphone and tablet games are “dominating” the show floor, whilst long-time publishers of regular console games decided not to have a booth.

In their place, dominating a massive section in the center aisle of the show floor, are smartphones and tablets: iPhones, Android phones, PlayStation phones and all manner of Japan-only devices with keys that easily let the country’s millions of texters type out entire novels’ worth of kanji messages. Cellphone games have been part of Tokyo Game Show for more than a decade, but until this year, the casual time-killers lurked on the periphery of the show, in the backs of the booths, attracting few onlookers.

The impressive growth of the mobile gaming industry is no secret to those who have been keeping an eye on the explosion of “app stores” through 2010 and 2011. But Wired makes a good point in its TGS coverage: there’s one niche of gamers mobile games have failed to attract, and that’s hardcore gamers. The “regular console games” that have dominated the Tokyo Games Show in the past years, and which are struggling to impress on iPhones, iPads, and Android handsets.

One challenge for Gree and other mobile gamemakers: Creating mobile games that appeal to hard-core gamers as well as casual players. Gree President and CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka noted the dilemma.

“I was just walking around the show floor,” he said at a press briefing Thursday, “and what I thought while I was looking around was, ‘Console games seem much more interesting than social games. They’re more cool.’”

Gree, for instance, is the company that bought OpenFeint and announced a CEO replacement this week. The issue is a complex one: Angry Birds is selling millions of copies (350 million to date), yet hardcore gamers still can’t find proper mobile counterparts for their favorite PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii games. Big companies like EA are reinventing themselves with strong mobile offerings, and revenue speaks clearly.

I believe the scarcity of “hardcore games” or lack thereof is more related to the youth of these mobile platforms, as well as ongoing technological advancements. Lets’s see what the A6 will bring.

[image via]

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Sparrow Developers Working on “Sparrow for iPhone”

As revealed by Dominique Leca to Business Insider, the company he co-founded is now working on an iPhone version of Sparrow, which is in the very early stages of development and simply known as “Sparrow for iPhone” at the moment. For those not familiar with the Mac app, Sparrow is an alternative email client for OS that started out as a mix between classic email and Tweetie-like UI to deliver a fresh Gmail experience on the desktop, and eventually evolved into a powerful solution to access Gmail (including features like shortcuts, stars, and labels) as well as classic IMAP. The app got more social and better integrated with Lion, adding full-screen mode and a completely redesigned sidebar for navigating through your inboxes. Some people say Sparrow’s success is due to the fact that the app does email, but it doesn’t feel like email; Sparrow is sold at $9.99 on the Mac App Store with a lite version available, and a licensed version also up on the devs’ website.

We previously reported on Sparrow adding Twitter’s Loren Brichter to the team of advisors, raising $250,000 in funding over the last months; according to Leca, Sparrow has made more than half a million dollars since the Mac App Store release, although they don’t like the fact that Apple’s store for OS X apps lists both indie software and applications from Apple such as Final Cut Pro X, iWork, or OS X Lion.

In the interview, Leca also reveals they’ve started working on an iPhone version of Sparrow, aimed at enhancing Apple’s Mail experience with a different and faster UI, attachments from the compose view, and lots more. If we had to speculate on Sparrow’s focus for iOS, we’d say porting the Gmail integration that has characterized the desktop app to iOS would be a good idea.

Still, the problem for Sparrow is that Apple has always been reluctant in accepting apps that “duplicate functionality”, such as email applications. That’s why Google hasn’t released an official Gmail app for iOS yet, whilst Android has one. Apple does, however, accept third-party browsers for iOS, albeit they’re based on the same engine of Safari – they can’t use their own interpreters. This is the reason behind the lack of a real Firefox version for the iPhone – the Firefox Home that Mozilla ships is actually based on WebKit, like any other alternative browser for iOS. They’re basically skins on top of Safari’s engine, with different functions and interfaces. Same applies to photo album management apps, which are simply connected to the Camera Roll (and Apple’s Photos app) through an API. An API or similar technique doesn’t exist for email messages, thus the lack of third-party email apps for iOS. Much has changed since 2008 (for instance, Apple now accepts web app wrappers such as MailWrangler), but native third-party email apps still haven’t made it to the App Store.

Leca seems somewhat confident in Apple’s intention to start opening up iOS soon to approve apps like Sparrow for iPhone, which in order to work would have to feature its own email assets in order to directly work with Gmail, out of Mail app, with a different UI and compose view. From the interview:

BI: So do you think they’ll approve it?

DL: I think they will. They’re accepting third party browsers, so why not mail? This would be really inconsistent. Opera has a browser out there, and I think Mozilla has one coming too.

BI: So you think it’s only a matter of time until Apple loosens the chains?

DL: Yeah, I guess so. In regards to apps that compete with their own apps, I think iOS is sufficiently settled and I think people have been evangelized enough now so Apple will feel more secure opening it up.

The current iPhone mail app is just about perfect, but we’re just making things faster in terms of UI, and we’re adding a lot of small details for power users, like attaching images straight from the compose window.

We’re looking forward to Sparrow’s upcoming features on the Mac and mobile version, although I’m personally not sure as to whether Apple could really decide to let others sell email apps or real browsers in the App Store. Sure, the platform is mature enough to let users easily differentiate between Apple’s default solutions and standalone apps, but that would mean giving up a bit of control on the ecosystem, something that Apple has carefully nurtured in the past three years. I believe Sparrow would also be a great addition to the iPad – which I use regularly to manage and respond to emails – but, again, I don’t know why and how could Apple free developers from the ties of Safari and Mail in the near future. [Business Insider via MacRumors]