400,000 apps in the App Store have never been downloaded says report

posted by Alan F.

Aug 02, 2012, 9:01 AM

400,000 apps in the App Store have never been downloaded says report

"If you’re not on those lists, it’s not sure that you’re being discovered by anyone else. The top 25 tend to be the same companies who spend millions of dollars to get to the top of those lists. If you’re an independent, small app publisher, then it’s really tough to be discovered."-Christian Henschel, Adeven CEO

Would you be surprised to hear that more than 60% of the apps in the App Store have never been downloaded, even once? That's the conclusion of analytical firm Adeven. The latter even counted the number of flashlight apps and found that Apple iPhone users in need of a quick light have 1,899 choices. Christian Henschel, Adeven CEO, said that there are only a "couple of thousand apps" that get downloaded in number from Apple's on-line applications store.

The sad thing about this is that it goes against the hopes and dreams of a number of small developers who read about the success that major developers are having. It's easy to see a game like Angry Birds take off, make a ton of moola, and think that this money tree can be easily planted. The reality is that it takes money for promotion and a whole lot of luck. Adeven CEO Henschel says that without a proper search mechanism in the App Store, the only way to get noticed is through the lists showing the top titles.

Apptrace offers free analytics for app developers

Adeven is promoting its free analytic service Apptrace which collects iOS app data in the 155 countries that support the App Store. Besides measuring how specific apps measure up in the entire store, Apptrace will soon be able to compare data for app vs. app analytics. Adeven will be introducing a unified SDK to handle the analytics for multiple ad brokers that a developer might use. Amazing that as recently as five years ago, there was no need for a company like Adeven and now it is filling a giant hole for information used by developers.

Adeven will start providing Android analytics in the fourth quarter and it will be interesting to see if there are as many dead apps in the Google Play Store as found in the App Store.

source: Adeven via GigaOM

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41 Comments

42. rncry

Posts: 1; Member since: Mar 19, 2015

Where did this company get their stats from? Apple don't publish this info do they?

posted on Mar 19, 2015, 12:13 PM 0

41. remmolacha

Posts: 4; Member since: Oct 29, 2012

PalmOS has more than 30k apps... oh wait..

posted on Oct 29, 2012, 4:46 PM 0

40. ari6666666

Posts: 1; Member since: Sep 15, 2012

So what? Just because they've never been used doesn't mean they don't exist. People can use them they just choose not too.

posted on Sep 15, 2012, 8:31 AM 0

39. ypchoudary

Posts: 1; Member since: Aug 31, 2012

This is not surprising considering that a lot app developers seem to think when you build an app people will automatically find the app and get downloads. Believe it or not this is the biggest reason for the lack of downloads for most apps. The app developer community needs to completely change the way they think about marketing their apps. You cannot just create an app and expect magic to happen. I am surprised that a huge number of developers do not take advantage of free and paid resources which can help them market their app and start making some serious money. Here is a free resource which app developers should definitely join:http://www.facebook.com/groups/appentrepreneurs/ And here is a paid resource which looks very promising:http://www.udemy.com/become-an-app-marketing-expert/

posted on Aug 31, 2012, 5:21 PM 0

32. tumchaaditya

Posts: 71; Member since: May 21, 2012

I always had a feeling that it would be so. All the app stores, may it be android iOS or windows phone, show only the popular apps over and over again. It would be excruciatingly difficult to browse almost half of the apps in aforementioned app stores simply because they don't show up anywhere.. In my opinion, about 80% of the apps in all these app stores don't see 4 digit download figures. People need to come up with new app ideas rather than just apps.. A thousand apps having the exact same purpose is just pointless...

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 11:17 PM 1

31. InspectorGadget80 unregistered

Then how can they have 1 million downloads?

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 6:59 PM 0

35. PhoneArenaUser

Posts: 5498; Member since: Aug 05, 2011

'Fart' apps for 'fart' users. :D

posted on Aug 03, 2012, 6:35 AM 0

29. tedkord

Posts: 17529; Member since: Jun 17, 2009

Did anyone really think that either the App Store or the Play Store had over a half million unique apps? There are probably less than a thousand totally unique in each. There are probably hundreds of music players, hundreds of e-book readers, etc...most people download one of each, maybe a couple to try out. If you filter out the useless apps, then filter out the apps that duplicate what the top sellers do, and your not left with many.

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 4:16 PM 0

19. Roomaku

Posts: 278; Member since: Feb 06, 2012

Just wait until the Android statistics come out, and Blackberry don't think iOS is the only one that has a huge number of ignored apps.

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 11:02 AM 1

11. gwuhua1984

Posts: 1237; Member since: Mar 06, 2012

LOL, who's that guy that was saying quantity over quality again?

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 10:21 AM 4

16. remixfa

Posts: 14605; Member since: Dec 19, 2008

taco and gallito?

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 10:30 AM 3

25. gallitoking

Posts: 4721; Member since: May 17, 2011

well good luck playing Angry Ninjas.... which I am sure was downloaded at least once.. yes there are more garbage apps in the Google store that get downloaded at least once.. yes good thing to brag about huh..

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 1:11 PM 2

27. gwuhua1984

Posts: 1237; Member since: Mar 06, 2012

Angry Ninja is a great game... what are you trying to say? Angry Ninja is a garbage app?

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 2:33 PM 2

9. snowgator

Posts: 3630; Member since: Jan 19, 2011

The question is: How many in the other stores are downloaded VS. completely ignored? Does a developer have a better chance gambling on a smaller, still developing ecosystem (WP, BB10, one of the other open source OS's)? Most of everyone on this site have already realized that app development is a hard, long sell.

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 10:02 AM 2

15. remixfa

Posts: 14605; Member since: Dec 19, 2008

developers in smaller newer ecosystems like WP7 have a much higher chance of having a high download % for a new/unknown app than on a super saturated OS like iOS or even Android. Large developers with name recognition like Rovio or EA obviously have an advantage on the big guys, but the small developers have better chances in smaller markets. Less choices in similar apps mean more likely purchases/downloads.

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 10:30 AM 3

8. Fallout09

Posts: 421; Member since: Oct 17, 2011

For me, I try download as many apps of a particular type and test them all out.... You would be surprised how many higher rated apps are inferior to one that has yet to be downloaded or rated.

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 9:52 AM 3

10. snowgator

Posts: 3630; Member since: Jan 19, 2011

It is kinda fun to kick around apps, try them out, compare them. But most people do not do that. They just download what every other user they know downloads, or whatever shows up first on their search when they need something. I wanted a Bill pay system on my Focus S, and most of the higher rated ones were pay apps with a small, very limited trial. So of course I pick one of the higher rated ones. It is just human nature.

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 10:06 AM 1

36. downphoenix

Posts: 3165; Member since: Jun 19, 2010

Amen to this. A good example is Instagram, what a bad app that is unbelievably popular. Pixlr-o-matic is 10 times better, but has 1/10th the downloads.

posted on Aug 03, 2012, 2:25 PM 0

6. Aeires unregistered

How depressing for those developers, especially after having to pay a developer fee to have your app in the store. On the other hand, goes to show a ton of developers aren't doing their homework. Close to 1900 flashlight apps, didn't anyone developing a flashlight app do a search before taking the time to make another one?

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 9:34 AM 12

7. good2great

Posts: 1042; Member since: Feb 22, 2012

very good point

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 9:35 AM 5

14. remixfa

Posts: 14605; Member since: Dec 19, 2008

I think its also going to show the difference between Apple market's vast majority of "pay apps" vs free apps. i bet money those are mostly pay apps unused. Android is going to have its share of unused apps, but I doubt it will be so large. The majority of android apps are "free & add supported" which makes it more likely someone will DL it just to see what its about. I'm sure there will be a metric ton of apps that were DL and barely used before deletion (if they track that much), but the amount of "never used" apps should be much less.

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 10:28 AM 5

38. jskrenes

Posts: 209; Member since: Dec 11, 2008

Maybe it's relatively easy to generate the code for a flashlight app, so a developer might try their hand at writing a flashlight code before a new app. But then it would make more sense to have thousands of Android flashlight apps than to pay a dev fee to Apple.

posted on Aug 20, 2012, 1:00 PM 1

4. andro.

Posts: 1999; Member since: Sep 16, 2011

Those 400,000 are probably all fart apps of wallpaper apps or otherwise stupid apps,the teenage ifan masses already have a fair number of these already downloaded and don't need several of the same apps! Its fair to say alot of app developers are releasing clones of already existent apps though

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 9:26 AM 14

5. good2great

Posts: 1042; Member since: Feb 22, 2012

so what you're saying is there aren't 400,000 fart apps in the play store? please man... be real... you know there are TONS of android apps that you will never download that are stupid, wallpapers, fart apps, and clones of other apps. like remixfa said above, its about 100k apps that both iOS and android users download.

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 9:34 AM 7

18. Non_Sequitur

Posts: 1111; Member since: Mar 16, 2012

Android has faaaaaaaar less useless fart apps. And who said live wallpapers are stupid? Ohno. I always use live wallpapers and many of my friends do as well.

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 11:01 AM 8

21. good2great

Posts: 1042; Member since: Feb 22, 2012

come on Non_ you seem like a reasonable guy... this app argument is stupid... apple/google dont create the apps they allow them... to me its the same... android has 600,000 apps some useful and some stupid as hell same with apple... the only difference is apple's apps are well polished they pretty much run like the android version but they look a lil more attractive... you have to at least agree with that...

posted on Aug 02, 2012, 11:31 AM 2

22. Non_Sequitur

Posts: 1111; Member since: Mar 16, 2012

Yes. I do agree that both platforms have a ton of stupid crap. I'm just saying that I haven't seen as many fart apps on Android as in iOS. I never said Android had less stupid apps. xD This is one of my favorite 'tard apps.https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=shake.to.charge.battery&hl=en