Apple launched its fifth generation iPhone 5 in late September this year and shipped 3 million units of the device within three days of its availability for sales. More importantly, Apple App Store has surpassed 1 million approved apps, and it won’t be wrong saying that the company is quite aggressive towards app development. Indeed, October was a month for mobile app marketers, as users eagerly explored the App Stores especially iOS users were enthusiastically searching for new apps to download for their iPhones.
According to a recent report from a Boston-based mobile app marketing startup firm—Fisku–, download on the iOS platform jumped up by about 33% since the launch of iPhone 5. In addition to this, the seasonal surge (especially in Christmas holidays) in app downloads is actually pretty much typical as mobile users interestingly explore for new apps.
Although app downloads grew up in October this year, but the cost paying for loyal users dropped by about 6% during the period to $1.06, from $1.13 a month before. The mobile app advertising firm defines loyal user as one that opens an app three times in a month. Apparently, iPhone 5 release has helped to push app marketing costs to one of the lowest level. Of course, lower marketing cost means that mobile app developers could create higher profit margin now.
Furthermore, the average number of downloads for the top 200 free iPhone apps rose to 5.4 million per day in October, up 33% from the prior month. A similar spike was visible in October 2011 since the launch of iPhone 4S—the top 200 free iPhone apps downloads jumped 29% after the launch of iPhone 4S.
The firms picked up about 55.6 billion apps action including launches, registrations and in-app purchases during the month of October this year.
Just two months before, Apple’s CEO—Tim Cook—announced that 90% of apps (available for download) in Apple App Store were downloaded in a month. And more importantly, the store itself is being accessed with 400 million iTunes account holders and they have downloaded app 35 billion of times over last four years. It seems from overall scenarios that Apple App store is going to outburst in this holiday season.
