It’s hard to underestimate how important ranking in Apple’s top 25 in the iTunes store is for mobile app developers. After all, the top 25 is probably the single most important app discovery mechanism for most iOS users. But how many downloads does it take to rank in the top 25? Mobile app store analytics firm Distimo today published some interesting data that answers just this question. Turns out, in the U.S. store, the answer currently is about 38,400 daily downloads for free iPhone apps and 3,530 for paid iPhone apps. To rank in the top 25 per category, of course, takes significantly fewer downloads, with games unsurprisingly being the most competitive category. It takes 25,300 daily downloads to rank in the gaming top 25 for free apps and 2,280 downloads for paid apps.
For free apps, other competitive categories include ‘entertainment’ (6,700 daily downloads), ‘social networking’ (5,800), ‘lifestyle’ (3,900) and ‘music’ (3,900). Interestingly, in the paid app charts photography apps rank just behind games and entertainment apps. Still, it currently only takes about 270 daily downloads to rank in the photography top 25 for paid apps.
These numbers, of course, are always changing and this just represent a snapshot of what Distimo found when it compiled this data last month.
Update: We just talked to one source with a lot of experience in building mobile apps and who also currently runs a top App Store app. According to this source, Distimo’s numbers are too low and may just represent data from a relatively small number of apps. Keep that in mind as you read Distimo’s data.
Given the popularity of games on iOS, Distimo also took a closer look at the various gaming subcategories. Here, arcade and action games lead the pack:
This is the first time Distimo is releasing a detailed set of these numbers. It’s worth noting, though, that at the end of 2011, the company reported that it still took about 45,000 daily downloads to rank in the top 25 of most popular free apps. Since then, though, Apple has been working hard to shut down various scams and bots that automatically downloaded apps and allowed developers to rank in Apple’s charts without having a real user base (then, once you are in the top 25, of course, real users will automatically find you, of course). Judging from Distimo’s latest data, these efforts are starting to pay off and will hopefully make life a little bit easier for legit developers.
Apps for mobile devices are a surprisingly robust source of jobs in the United States, according to research from TechNet. Since 2008, apps have created 466,000 American jobs. TechNet estimates that about 155,000 of those tech-related jobs are related to app development and tech support, while the remaining 311,000 jobs also require tech skills but include things like app marketing and art design.
Of those jobs, the highest percentage (23.8 percent) of the total are located in California. Other app hot spots include New York (6.9 percent), Washington (6.4 percent), Texas (5.4 percent) and New Jersey (4.2 percent). Central Florida doesn’t want to be left out, as the Orlando Sentinel reports; local universities and training institutes are high on app development learning programs for would-be developers.
These numbers include not only jobs created for iOS apps, but also those triggered by the development of apps for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Facebook.
[via The Loop]
Apps have created 466,000 U.S. jobs in four years originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Ever think you’d see Android applications executing natively within iOS? A project called “in-the-box” is working toward this goal, and it’s hoping to provide developers an easy path for submitting their software to the App Store. This means Apple users could get a crack at exotic titles from Google’s turf, all without jailbreaking their devices. The magic is performed by porting the Dalvik virtual machine and Gingerbread API’s to iOS, which developers must bundle inside their applications — something that’s already resulted in a Java-based “Hello world” app (see it in action after the break). It’s an early demonstration, as the only evidence is the output to a console window, but if you’re an Android dev that’s looking to rock the boat (and willing to risk App Store denial), this could be a fine path to explore.
I have been using my iPhone for about a year now. Since playing around and reviewing apps are both my passion and way of making a living, I have installed and deleted hundreds of apps over this period of time. I only buy those apps that make it into top tier blogs. Never ever have I bought an app on an impulse or just because it costs less than a dollar. While it is common for me to overspend when am out with friends or while I am shopping, when it comes to buying that $0.99 or $1.99 app, I will suddenly don the Warren Buffett hat and start doing intense background checks.
Now, let us come to the case of free apps. Every couple of days, I frequent the app store to see which apps are trending and if there are new apps for me to try. If I find a free app (with a great looking icon, that’s a mandatory requirement), I will immediately download it, try it for a few minutes and in about 90% of cases, will delete them within the hour of downloading it. That has happened to Path, Instagram, Stickybits, Tumblr etc.
The Evernote app is still on my phone only because their green Elephant logo looks great against my wallpaper. Labelbox is there for the same reason too. I use Twitter for iPhone all day long but for some reason I have got Hootsuite installed but I never use it anyway.
So, the general trend is I pay very little attention to free apps. So do lot of people. It’s not because the apps are not good, in fact the ones I have mentioned here all awesome. I might use some of them sometime down the road, but still I delete them anyway. There could be only one reason for this careless attitude. Free apps are not receiving the respect they deserve. If there was a trial period attached to an app, instead of being completely free, am pretty sure I would have thought twice before downloading and deleting them.
Suddenly one day I decided to develop apps for the iOS platform (despite having Zero programming knowledge or the inclination towards learning Objective C). I started to look around which apps are doing well and how people are getting the word out about their apps. Every iOS (or any other smartphone app for that matter) app that gets venture capital is available for free. These days it has become a fashion to run a business with no real business model to begin with. That’s chic, hip and cool. So, I did not give much weightage to those type of free apps.
But I stumbled upon a lot of indie developers making brilliant, quality paid apps while occasionally releasing free apps. That surprised me a bit. Free apps help marketing the brand and in turn puts their paid apps in front of the users. That’s the argument I usually hear from people. Then why isn’t Tapbots releasing any free apps? It’s not like they received tens of millions of dollars in VC funding like Color did.
Just a few days ago, Tapbots released their Twitter app for iOS. The world went berserk over the announcement and there were a lot of people asking “Did you try it?”. Since I got this question multiple times in one day, I checked if the $1.99 price tag has suddenly been slashed. No, it wasn’t. Why in the world would I try an app that costs so much, when the official Twitter client that is all kinds of awesome is available for free? If there was a lite app like Twittelator, I would have given it a go. (But I eventually checked Tweetbot out on my friend’s mobile and found it to be built like an unpolished Android app).
So, in essence, I have immense respect towards a crippled lite version and have no regards for a full featured app that’s available for free. Weird, isn’t it? I decided to ask what developers thought of this phenomenon and if a lot of others behave like me too. I contacted Zach & Trey of Inov8 apps, the makers of iVite and Ivan of Coppertino, the makers of Wallpaper Wizard with a bunch of questions.
Invo8 develops apps for the iOS app store and Coppertino develops for the Mac app store. I particularly chose them because both the studios distribute free and lite apps. I interviewed them with two sets of questions. One for free apps and the other for lite apps. While the questions were largely unique for each category, the theme was the same: how helpful are free and lite apps for their brand image and sales? Here is what they have to say:
Why Develop a free app in the first place?
I was eagerly expecting an answer to this question, because that’s what this quest was all about. But Ivan threw a curveball stating that he developed, Forismatic, their free mac app just for fun. That wasn’t in the list of answers I was expecting, but apparently that’s why everyone is unique.
Folks at Inov8 stated that with over 450,000 apps in the App Store, free apps help put the brand in front of people.
The verdict is mixed, but the argument that free apps act as a marketing tool proves sound.
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The next question was if their free apps gained traction, will they start displaying ads. Inov8 is already running ads in their lite version and if iAds were to be introduced for Mac Apps, Ivan might consider taking the leap.
It’s good to learn that developers don’t think of advertising as an element that ruins user experience.
Paid Promotions
On a question about spending from their own pockets for promoting the free app, Coppertino answered in the negative. They don’t have an ad budget at the moment. Inov8 on the other hand, rolls them into the same advertising budget of the paid app. The latter’s view is that free apps help people see the value of their paid apps.
Boost in Sales
When their free apps top the charts Coppertino sees a strong uptick in their paid app sales. They say it’s natural – people come to the app’s page and see their other apps and check them out.
Inov8 also say that free apps have a great role to play in the sales of paid apps.
Will there be more free apps?
This one is the clincher. Whatever they say about their past endeavors, it is their future development plans that show how far successful their free app marketing campaign actually is.
Both the developers stood their ground and confirmed that they will be developing free apps whenever they release a paid app.
Despite the skepticism of people in the sidelines like me, the real players have spoken loud and clear. Free apps are a viable marketing tool and they are here to stay.
Then came the topic of lite apps. As well know now, lite apps are feature restricted versions of their paid counterparts made available for free for potential users to test drive the app.
Conversion Rate of Lite Apps
Ivan says, “Our rate is pretty low and is somewhere around 5 to 10%, depending on the price and special deals”. He further adds, ”But that also depends on how limited your free version is – Wallpaper Wizard lite has enough wallpapers for a few months of the lazy changing that’s why lot of people keep using the lite one”.
On the other hand, Inov8 has a much lesser conversion rate of about 2%. This they attribute to the feature gap between lite and paid versions of the app. “The feature-gap between the free and paid versions is not that large, however. As we add features to the premium version and increase that gap, we hope to see a larger conversion rate.”
Staying Power
Wallpaper Wizard has not been on sale long enough to say, but so far most of their installs are active and people are downloading wallpapers from time to time.
Folks at Inov8 while lauding my question, admitted that they are not keeping track of that data at present, but they plan to do it some time in the future.
Role of Lite Apps in Sales
“When we released the lite version a while ago (a month or so after the full went on sale) we saw a huge boost in sales. Looks like people feel safer to try before they buy”, says Ivan for my question if lite apps help boost sales.
Inov8 released the lite and paid version simultaneously, so there is no real data to compare. However, Zach opines, “We believe the free version puts our app in front of users that otherwise would not even consider using the app. ”
Usable Feedback
These days negative feedback hurts a brand more than ever. Do comments from the lite app feedback section hurt paid apps? Ivan doesn’t think so. On the other hand, Zach strongly believes that negative feedback of any form hurts a lot and he has seen quite few examples of that too.
Trey from Inov8 insists that poor planning from the developer at the development stage of the app might be the cause for negative feedback. He goes on to say that developers should ensure that the core functionality is intact in both the free and paid versions and limit only the extra features for the paid version.
Piracy
Coppertino does not track piracy with any special tools. They just track activations and compare them to the App Store stats. From what they see there aren’t any pirates using their apps. Good for them!
Zach and Trey have a couple of interesting observations in this regard. Trey says, “The size of the jailbreaking community is growing exponentially, especially since the recent court decision was handed down. If your app is good, it is going to get cracked. We do not subscribe to the theory that every cracked app download results in a lost sale. Most of the time, the pirates wouldn’t have paid for the premium version anyway”. I am not sure what other developers have to say about piracy, but if I were a developer, I would be sharing Trey’s pragmatic vision too.
So there you have it. Free and lite apps help the developers get brand recognition and traction. And the business model is actually sustainable. What’s your take on this?
“There are certain times in your life when you know it’s the right move to do something. Health care has always seemed like it’s just not there with technology; it always felt backwards.
I believe health care should be as seamless as this: If you’re hurt while skiing in Colorado, doctors should be able to pull up your medical records and browse through your medical history immediately, reading what you’re allergic to and a list of previous injuries. It should work as seamlessly as banking systems talking to each other, but it doesn’t.”
– Daniel Kivatinos the Co-Founder of DrChrono
The U.S. government, which has notoriously failed to produce a reputable health care system, is trying to solve this problem. As part of the healthcare stimulus, it has implemented new incentives for electronic health record (EHR) adoption. The HITECH Act specifies that physicians can qualify for $44,000 or more in economic stimulus incentives for adopting an EHR over the next 5 years. To fund this, the government is shelling out $19.2 billion dollars to help move all doctors off paper charts and manilla folders and onto electronic systems. The main goal is to improve the overall cost and efficiency of our healthcare system. After the first 5 years, doctors will be penalized for not using electronic medical records (EMR).
Daniel Kivatinos and his Co-Founder Michael Nusimow, the CEO of DrChrono are both software developers and hackers who met in college. In elevator pitch lingo, “DrChrono addresses the complexities and critical needs of today’s healthcare environment by providing a multi point solution, mobile health point-of-care apps plus access to our cloud web based Electronic Health Record platform.” They founded the company in January 2009 and released their feature product- the DrChrono iPad app for doctors one week after Apple started selling them last spring. The iPad is a perfect device for doctors, in fact it almost looks like a clipboard. Paul Graham, the famous programmer (inventor of Bayesian spam filters) and venture capitalist has called DrChrono “the SAP for doctors.”
Current features include e-prescriptions, allowing doctors to send a prescription to any pharmacy in the USA electronically through SureScripts, which connects to 98% of U.S. pharmacies. The app processes medical billing, allowing the doctor to tick off certain procedures and problems and automatically submit bills to insurance companies. Kivatinos and Nusimow spent the first year of their company building relationships with insurance companies and clearinghouses to be able to process these. Lastly, the app includes form builder tools, which allows doctors to turn their current paper forms into electronic documents with customizable fields. They’re continually upgrading the app, with a new release every month, consulting doctors throughout the process.
The Evolution of DrChrono
DrChrono is a New York born, San Francisco/YCombinator bred startup. The first version of their app was just an appointment reminder system for patients. Then they built a medical billing engine which hooked into all of the insurance companies.
“Then we heard that the iPad was coming out and our whole company changed,” says Kivatinos. “We said, ‘Let’s make this thing totally different. We started to build on Apple’s SDK for the iPad before the hardware came out. When the Apple iPad came out, Apple released our app immediately and all of a sudden we had doctors coming out in droves. This was the turning point in our company when doctors started to call us. A doctor could be at the gym, looking at his schedule and processing bills. Essentially we built a platform, which hooks into the iPad and the cloud through a web browser. The future is mobile.”
DrChrono’s released their app a week after the first iPad came out. Up to this point, they have over 1,500 doctors signed up. It’s particularly popular with single or small doctor practices. Over the next month, they will hold in-Apple store training sessions for doctors on the iPad in the city of Chicago.
New Features
Speech to text on the iPad
DrChrono worked with M*Modal to create the first medical speech to text functionality on the iPad. The feature works with a bluetooth headset. Over time, the speech to text module improves as it learns the doctor’s inflections and choice of diction. It’s an extremely helpful tool for doctors who need their hands to deal with patients and can’t be typing notes on the iPad’s keyboard at the same time.
Drug Interactions Checking on the iPad
Another new feature includes “drug interactions checking.” This video shows how a health provider can check drug interactions on the iPad through the DrChrono app.
The Future of DrChrono on the iPad 2
The iPad 2′s front and rear facing cameras open up a world of diagnosis-related possibilities to expand the doctor-patient relationship in the future. Let’s say a child has a rash. Kivatinos envisions a doctor taking a video or picture of the patient’s rash. The patient, and future doctors would then have access to this totally new form of electronic medical record. The other huge possibility to expand the doctor-patient relationship with the iPad is by using FaceTime for instant and remote contact. Emergency alerts are also coming soon, something akin to a push notification.
Pricing
DrChrono’s pricing model ranges from a free base offer including storage for 1,000 patients and one doctor login to a premium offer including 10 staff logins and unlimited patient record storage for $199 per month. Setting up medical billing costs quite a bit, which is why they charge for the premium versions of the app. Kivatinos also notes that most doctors pay upwards of $50,000 for a similar electronic system. A complete list of pricing can be found here.
Know any on-the-go, iPad owning doctors who want to cash in on an extra $44,000 from the government over the next 5 years? Tell them to download the free app here.
Other startups that are building electronic health record systems (EHRs) as platforms to support app stores, include HealthForge, an open source EHR platform, Boundary Medical, Phytel, and emerge.md. Also other notable efforts to revolutionize health care through technology include Aza Raskin’s Massive Health and Dr. Jay Parkinson’s Hello Health.