Apple is on a spree to flaunt its innumerable Apps for the App Store again. In another milestone announcement, the smartphone giant announced that more than 40 billion iOS apps have been downloaded until now, of which more than 20 billion are in 2012 itself and more than 2 billion in December during the Christmas season. It’s important to note that these statistics do not include updates and re-downloads and only count unique downloads by individual Apple devices. This makes it even more relevant because it goes to show the kind of reach and availability the Apple provides in the market for its developers. It has been a wonderful development for the company, which takes a 30 per cent cut for each app downloaded on the App Store.
Until now, the developers in the Apple ecosystem have created more than 7,75,000 apps, which has made Apple to pay them more than seven billion dollars. It has generally been a perception among developers that Apple’s iOS ecosystem is more monetizable among consumers than the Android OS and that iPhone owners are more likely to actually purchase apps than their Android counterparts.
Apple has been touting the success of major game development companies like Imangi Studios, which developed Temple Run along with others like Backflip studios and Supercell which developed games like DragonVale and Clash of the Titans. Describing the success of Temple Run, which has been downloaded over 75 million times, Keith Shepherd, co-founder of Imangi Studios said, “We were simply looking to create a game that was fun and easy to play, but once it hit the App Store, the game took off. This past year, we saw more than 75 million downloads of Temple Run on iOS.” The other two games have raked in more than $100 million combined, which is a feat in itself. On the other hand, many such games including Temple Run are now available in Android too, whereas a direct comparison of App sales is not yet available, it can be said that Android owners are equally eager in consuming apps.
It is hard to ignore Android as an App developer. IPad and hugely popular IPhone 5 are costlier, hence perhaps the thought that owners will buy readily because they have deep pockets. But with increase in number of freemium Apps, high end popular Android phones like Galaxy xyz, it makes sense to believe that maximum users don’t think twice before spending a $0.99-2.99 on an app purchase.