| 1% | Long-term audiences for iPhone applications are generally about 1% of the total number of downloads according to data from Pinch Media, which provides embedded analytics for mobile developers. Sports applications have the biggest number of re-uses after the first day, but entertainment applications tend to retain their audiences best over the long-term. Source: Pinch Media |
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I think there are interesting statistics (including the previous post too) but Im left wondering how much we can take them as leading indicators. The iPhone as a platform for applications is less than a year old, its infancy still, which I think is significant for a couple reasons:
the iPhones cultural success has brought in many groups with no real background in building successful applications, ad agencies for example.
people using the iPhone are getting their first real experience being able to install anything easily, let alone on their phone.
application creators are still largely using the App Store as their distribution channel AND their marketing channel, meaning that if youre not in the top 100, you have no other means of getting the word out.
This leads me to think there is still a high percentage of frankly not worthwhile applications being downloaded simply because they can be. Not a great recipe for long term use or for support of higher prices applications.
I wonder if as the platform matures if we'll see all these numbers change radically. I think people will still experiment with inexpensive apps, but I also think that paying higher prices for more robust and frankly more useful and sophisticated applications will be much more common. Finally, as application for mobile become seen as actual products rather than promotional advertisements, my hope is that we'll see the app store stabilize as a distribution channel with people marketing their apps outside the store itself.
Thanks for your comment Justin. I'm in agreement over the eventual maturity of the mobile applications business and an overall improvement in quality. However, I'm not sure the fundamentals of customer behaviour - i.e. downloading many applications and quickly discarding those which don't meet their needs - will change significantly. As long as the user 'investment' required to download an application remains so low (easy and cheap), there is little reason for users to download fewer applications and spend more time choosing prior to download - they might as well just download it and try for themselves rather than attempting to guess what it is like from the description page.
This might change if the barriers to download were to increase - such as a rise in average price or a usability issue, but I don't see either of those things happening any time soon.