4 ms·

Overwhelming majority of iPhone's 100,000 apps are unused

14 points by adriand 17y ago

amichail 17y ago
What about the Genius feature? Maybe it should be turned on by default?
- Zev 17y ago
  Somehow, I imagine it would be a privacy nightmare if Apple were to enable Genius by default. People would say that Apple cared more about money than privacy. Genius works by explicitly telling Apple they can go through your purchases to recommend other, similar things to you.
  - danielrhodes 17y ago
    Well it's not like they don't already know what you purchased. Netflix and Amazon don't ask permission to give you recommendations.
patio11 17y ago
Popularity of just about anything is a zipf distribution, although the AppStore is a special case because of the winners win effect. (Winners win in SEO, too, but it is less of a total shutout because there are so many queries. If you think about it, the AppStore is just a private Internet with a braindead search engine on top that can only display the results to a few dozen hardcoded search queries.)
gcheong 17y ago
100,000 is not that many and I believe it's only the tip of the iceberg. Installed != in use and is not a proxy for how frequent someone uses an app. It's like saying the majority of books go unread so that deflates the meaning of Amazon claiming to be Earth's biggest bookstore. It's also not a very good argument against having more books. "But does the finding take a bit of steam out of the company's size-centric marketing push? You'd better believe it." How? If you have 100,000 apps vs 10,000 apps the chances are greater that your users will be able to find an app that suites their needs.
snprbob86 17y ago
Here's a thought: What is the average number of published apps per developer? If we assume 10 (very high), at $100/year, that's $1,000,000 for just one year. More realistically, developers are producing one or maybe a couple apps. Many people have also released 0, simply paying the $100 for the right to play with it. Let's say the lowest is 1 app per developer. That's $10,000,000. So Apple is making somewhere between $1M and $10M in subscriptions before considering renewals or royalties.
- tedunangst 17y ago
  How many app reviewers does Apple have? Probably more than 10, so right there goes $1M out the window. iPhone dev subscriptions is probably the least profitable of all Apple "products".
  - Xixi 17y ago
    To begin with, I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone dev subscription was there simply to lower the number of apps to review, and hence the number of app reviewers needed.
    - snprbob86 17y ago
      The $ is much more likely to guarantee you have a credit card number and address. Just in case someone does something unscrupulous.
jsz0 17y ago
Isn't this the status quo for any popular platform? The best example I can think of is video game consoles since all the sales numbers are tracked. The attach rate (average number of games sold per console) is pretty low. The Xbox 360 leads this generation of consoles with an attach rate of 7 games per console. There are nearly 1000 Xbox 360 games. So that means the average Xbox 360 owner only buys 1% of the games available for the platform. It's impossible to know how often they actually play the 7 games they buy. Of course there is a real difference between a $60 Xbox game and a 99 cent iPhone app but I feel like the model is basically the same regardless of price. The model works because there are enough users with different interests/tastes to support a big application catalog.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
StrawberryFrog 17y ago
Apple still hypes the absolute number of apps in the store, probably because they can measure it. But past a certain point, it doesn't matter. Who cares anymore how many videos are on YouTube, for example? Answers could be "enough", "too many" or "all of them".
JoeAltmaier 17y ago
Apple invented the store to get free software development effort at little risk to themselves, and discover what apps were most compelling on the iPhone. At this point they could shut the store, keep the 25most-used apps, and the average iPhone customer could hardly tell the difference.

14 points by adriand 17y ago

amichail 17y ago

What about the Genius feature? Maybe it should be turned on by default?

Zev 17y ago
Somehow, I imagine it would be a privacy nightmare if Apple were to enable Genius by default. People would say that Apple cared more about money than privacy. Genius works by explicitly telling Apple they can go through your purchases to recommend other, similar things to you.
- danielrhodes 17y ago
  Well it's not like they don't already know what you purchased. Netflix and Amazon don't ask permission to give you recommendations.

patio11 17y ago

Popularity of just about anything is a zipf distribution, although the AppStore is a special case because of the winners win effect. (Winners win in SEO, too, but it is less of a total shutout because there are so many queries. If you think about it, the AppStore is just a private Internet with a braindead search engine on top that can only display the results to a few dozen hardcoded search queries.)

gcheong 17y ago

100,000 is not that many and I believe it's only the tip of the iceberg. Installed != in use and is not a proxy for how frequent someone uses an app. It's like saying the majority of books go unread so that deflates the meaning of Amazon claiming to be Earth's biggest bookstore. It's also not a very good argument against having more books. "But does the finding take a bit of steam out of the company's size-centric marketing push? You'd better believe it." How? If you have 100,000 apps vs 10,000 apps the chances are greater that your users will be able to find an app that suites their needs.

snprbob86 17y ago

Here's a thought: What is the average number of published apps per developer? If we assume 10 (very high), at $100/year, that's $1,000,000 for just one year. More realistically, developers are producing one or maybe a couple apps. Many people have also released 0, simply paying the $100 for the right to play with it. Let's say the lowest is 1 app per developer. That's $10,000,000. So Apple is making somewhere between $1M and $10M in subscriptions before considering renewals or royalties.

tedunangst 17y ago
How many app reviewers does Apple have? Probably more than 10, so right there goes $1M out the window. iPhone dev subscriptions is probably the least profitable of all Apple "products".
- Xixi 17y ago
  To begin with, I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone dev subscription was there simply to lower the number of apps to review, and hence the number of app reviewers needed.
  - snprbob86 17y ago
    The $ is much more likely to guarantee you have a credit card number and address. Just in case someone does something unscrupulous.

jsz0 17y ago

Isn't this the status quo for any popular platform? The best example I can think of is video game consoles since all the sales numbers are tracked. The attach rate (average number of games sold per console) is pretty low. The Xbox 360 leads this generation of consoles with an attach rate of 7 games per console. There are nearly 1000 Xbox 360 games. So that means the average Xbox 360 owner only buys 1% of the games available for the platform. It's impossible to know how often they actually play the 7 games they buy. Of course there is a real difference between a $60 Xbox game and a 99 cent iPhone app but I feel like the model is basically the same regardless of price. The model works because there are enough users with different interests/tastes to support a big application catalog.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

StrawberryFrog 17y ago

Apple still hypes the absolute number of apps in the store, probably because they can measure it. But past a certain point, it doesn't matter. Who cares anymore how many videos are on YouTube, for example? Answers could be "enough", "too many" or "all of them".

JoeAltmaier 17y ago

Apple invented the store to get free software development effort at little risk to themselves, and discover what apps were most compelling on the iPhone. At this point they could shut the store, keep the 25most-used apps, and the average iPhone customer could hardly tell the difference.