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Apple's App Store is zombie infested, a research claims

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By Chris P.

Published: Jul 10, 2013, 9:43 AM

Apple

We may be crashing the party here, today being Apple's App Store 5th birthday and all, so we do feel kind of bad. We do want to make up for some of the unpleasantness below, so we do remind you that Apple is treating you to some freebies, with over 20 previously paid-for apps going free for in celebration.

Launched on this day in 2008, the App Store has been a real game-changer and continues to reach impressive heights – the latest being its 50 billion app downloads milestone from a selection of about 900,000 apps. And if that wasn't impressive enough on its own, Apple boasts it has paid out about $10bn to app developers to this date -- three times more than all other app stores out there, combined.

So where's the poop?

Well, according to mobile ad and app analytics startup, Adeven, the reality isn't as rosy as the above data indicates. “579,001 apps out of a total of 888,856 apps in our database are zombies,” the firm said, according to BBC. The startup defines zombies as apps that get almost no downloads and are out of the App Store's list of over 300,000 apps downloaded worldwide: “We can't say how many downloads they have – Apple doesn't reveal this – but it is very small.”

So precisely how misdirecting are those big numbers companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft throw around? Somewhat. A noteworthy consideration, though, is that these numbers, in essence, capture the amount of developer interest towards a given platform – a metric on its own.

source: BBC

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Chris Panayotov is a former mobile tech reviewer of phones, tablets and wearables at PhoneArena. However, his contribution to PhoneArena content includes not just reviews, but all kinds of regular and experimental features, such as news stories, buying guides, and an exclusive column on the most notable phones out of Asia.