Developer sales data reveals logarithmic Marketplace, 70,000 downloads

December 18, 2010 | By Surur

Sigurd Snørteland has made public the performance of his 4 free applications in Marketplace, and as it is typical of most application stores, it reveals the top 10 applications benefiting from the bulk of the downloads, and a very long tail indeed.

data

Sigurd has 4 applications in Marketplace, with various levels of success, and it is his most recent app which has seen the most attention, garnering more than 50,000 downloads in 23 days, and reaching a Marketplace rank of 8, with an average of 2274 downloads per day.

The other apps have not fared as well, but what is interesting is the rapid drop-off when going from position 8 with 2300 downloads per day, to position 49 with only 330 downloads per day.

The rapid drop-off is demonstrated in this graph, which is clearly exponential, showing clearly the very large benefit of being in the top 10, and suggesting developers should not expect much, at least at this point, if their app does not make it into 100.

As mentioned at the start, this behaviour of marketplace is typical for most app stores, but it does also appear to be a pretty severe example of the problem.

The good news is of course that Sigurd accumulated around 70,000 total downloads, which should of course not be sneezed at, and if ad-enabled could earn him a good mint.

Thanks Sigurd for making the data public. More can be read at his blog here. Tetris7 can be found in Marketplace here.

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged developers, software, windows phone 7

http://twitter.com/jessiethe3rd @jessiethe3rd

Man.. you guys flippin' report THE NEWS on WP7… amazingly good content insight.
http://twitter.com/AaronCT123 @AaronCT123

Eh, well thre are a number of factors here- it's not all doom and gloom if you're not in the top 10. I mean, the game in question is Tetris. I'm sure the numbers for Beezz have improved ever since the last update

bitslave

Ok, but Beezz sells for $0.00 therefore 100,000 x $0.00 = $0.00 so without in-app advertising how do you cover your initial and on-going development and support costs?

http://twitter.com/AaronCT123 @AaronCT123

The point was clearly that you could come from behind without making any Top lists and not that Beezz was making a ton of money..

bitslave

Yes understood, I suppose I'm just saying that the example app Beezz, without any advertising revenue is still making zero dollars even if they sell 100,000 copies.

Not sure that's a sustainable business model that's all.

Tomservo

Here's to you, not understanding statistics and logarithms.
bitslave

You need to know the development and ongoing support costs before determining if or when the venture is profitable and these figures never seem to be available.

Appears to me that only a handful of developers will make any money out of the mobile phone apps market the vast majority will make peanuts, maybe enough to cover the Microsoft developer annual $99.00 fee and a couple cartons of beer if they're lucky.

Hope I'm wrong!

Danny

Which is no different than any other platform. A small percentage do very well, some okay but most – peanuts. That is the case in the app store because the iPhone is far more expensive to develop for.

Dom

My app is in the iPhone App Store is in the top 300 and sells approx 700 paid copies per day. It is no more expensive developing for iPhone. Infact it is much cheaper than Windows Mobile development ever was. I don't develop for WP7 yet and based upon these figures I definitely won't be.

hAl

The top 300 of iPhone apps compares to about the top 50 of Windows Phone 7 apps if you compare the size of the apps markets.
That is already at 300 downloads a day. So it would be unclear why you would pass it over.

Dom

Yes but that is 300 downloads of a "free" app? Mine is paid for.
chinch

what is your iOS app name selling 700 copies a day?

congrats as that is quite successful
Dom

I would rather not say. I had 100+ sales a day on Windows Mobile (until the iPhone appeared) with a higher price point but haven't jumped into WP7 yet. The curve is a famous one and is the same for all App Stores. It's the sales that worry me, and I have no plans to use in-game advertising.
chinch

I can respect privacy .. however your nondisclosure doesn't help validate your public statements.

In-game advertising is clearly the way of the future – even Lord Jobs validated that with iOS ads. As Android becomes more popular and "apps" on smartphones spreads from iZealots this will be more noticeable to developers.

To be honest if you have an app doing 700/day in iOS you'd be NUTS to disregard WP7, especially considering the fact it will only GROW AND GROW, has awesome free tools that run on any PC… making the the net cost moot. This is business 101. Nevermind wanting to protect your market and letting it grow on a promising new mobile OS.
Dom

If I spend time on WP7 then that is time that I am not spending on iOS which has proven to be very lucrative (to me). I could give you any app name but I'd rather just be honest and say that yep it is private. I don't mind giving you a few figures tho'. I have several apps on iOS. WP7 isn't commercially viable yet IMHO. Most of us devs are just one man, maybe three men teams. WP7 development is loaded with financial risk and that is a conservative appraisal right now. As for in-game ads I know you are right but I don't like them and so long as I am getting 1000+ paid sales a day from iOS then I am happy to continue without them. For some reason iOS users love buying apps.
bitslave

That's my concern as I said above 100,000 downloads x $0.00 = $0.00 and you have to use invasive advertising to make any money at all.

http://www.facebook.com/saadhashmi73 Saad Hashmi

I think Microsoft really needs to emphasize discovering apps more in the Marketplace, not just what's popular or has great reviews. Every time I go to the Marketplace on the phone (that's usually where I end up going–I rarely use the Zune browser) I always try to find the apps I'm looking for rather than seeing apps that I may want.

For example, I was looking for a downloadable Qur'an (I'm Muslim) and I searched it up and I found a couple apps and a handful of results from Zune and that's it. But I also wish that it weren't so precise to show me the most relevant result and ignore the rest; I would also love to see apps that could have similar content, like a Prayer Times app, or even other religious apps like downloadable Bibles. I think THAT would be an extremely useful feature for devs and that is something Android has nailed with their Market (making the most relevant results appear at the top and showing similar content below).

It would also be really cool if the Marketplace offered a feature where it would look at what apps you already have and show you which ones may be similar or from the same developer. Kind of like how the Zune desktop software helps you discover related artists with MixView.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000479683479 Milad Bazzaz

I think WP7 is doing just fine…I know a lot of people that didn't want to go with a 1.0 version of an OS without a filled appstore etc…

especially since the first batch of phones had rather underwhelming hardware…I for myself know that I will buy a windows phone but I have the HD2 and the new wave of hardware just wasn't appealing to me…once I see the next generation phones hit the market, I will buy a windows phone.

People are always reluctant to new products and they have a "wait and see" approach especially with all this "WP7 doesn't have this or that" BS in the media people want to wait and see how things turn out before they put their faith into Microsofts hand…

Lets be honest here, Microsoft has a terrible reputation as a consumer brand. Everybody is like " oh, its from Microsoft, no thanks…" or if they see WP7 they are "this is really from Microsoft???"…

Microsoft needs to understand that private consumers are as important as enterprise solutions….once your reputation sucks, its really hard to get out of it.
hAl

Why are you plotting the marketplace ranking versus the daily download ranking.
Are they really related or is the marketplace ranking based on the total downloads.

If you put the totall download in a graph with the ranking it is much less skewed.

I think you messed up

http://wmpoweruser.com wmpoweruser

The graph actually looks the same.

<img src="http://wmpoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/td.png" width="500">

http://twitter.com/jk_sparrow @jk_sparrow

4 apps? really!?
imho 4 apps as a sample is not quite representative!

chinch

A few developers get all the riches in any ecosystem.

Here is a good – LOOONG – article referencing iPhone developer trends here from several months ago. IMHO a MUST READ for someone considering app development especially as a primary source of income.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010…

bitslave

Thanks for that link it just confims what I've been thinking.
Dom

Be original, be a perfectionist and be prolific and you will make LOTS of $$$ from iOS. That cannot be said of WP7 at this time and none of us have a crystal ball for the future.