iTunes app total downloads to overtake songs this year
Research #Market #iTunes · 17 comments
by Horace Dediu
Last week I posted the iTunes download rate graph that showed how Apps are being downloaded much more rapidly than songs and revealed an inflection point in the song rate.
Based on the recent updates to iTMS and iTAS on Sept. 1, the following graph shows the cumulative units of songs and apps downloaded indexed to the same starting date.
As can be seen, the App store has reached the same total downloads in 2.2 years as the iTMS reached after five years. The two curves are likely to be the same height (around 13 billion each) before the year is over.
17 comments
Ouriel Ohayon ·
fantastic data and great job gathering it. we published here additional insights on why this is happening. Do you have a different interpretation?
http://blog.appsfire.com/more-apps-downloaded-tha...
asymco ·
Apps are indeed content. The writing is on the wall. In 2008 when the first fart app arrived it was an epiphany for me because the purpose of that app was the same as any form of media. Not only that but apps-as-media has implications in the way they are produced, marketed, priced and consumed. All the data since has been nothing but confirmation of this.
RattyUK ·
@Ouriel Ohayon Not entirely convinced by your thinking over on your blog about Asymco's figures. I think rather than apps being the new source of music, which is what you seem to be arguing. That you can source music from far more places than just iTunes can explain the drop off in music sales.
Apps, for the vast majority, can only be obtained from iTunes.
Lee Joramo ·
It would be interesting to split out data for Free and Paid apps.
Ralph ·
Any data on Free vs Paid? What's the revenue here? We know over 75% of iOS apps are paid. I would be very interesting to see how that correlates to downloads.
Ouriel Ohayon ·
no. i am just saying that apps in addition to be legitimate music alternatives are the best format to customize your phone experience and express your true personality. music is a subset of that
Gandhi ·
I think Apple saw this coming as well. John Gruber and other bloggers have picked up on this, that the Ping roll out for the iTunes store is merely a test run for a more focused initiative to roll it out for the App store, and then once resources are available, roll it out for the book store. While the immediate effect is to head of Facebook should it decide to enter the music sales business, the bigger goal is to protect the Apple app economy.
Even though the apps store is curated by Apple, it is mainly along the lines of rooting out spam, porn, etc. It does not help me, as a consumer, in finding that perfect app. Even now, I rarely go beyond the top lists or featured app section to buy an app. Unless I know exactly what I am looking for, all those plethora of apps are ignored because I do not know about them.
But with Ping, there are in a sense, I along with the millions of Ping users out there, who now become curators of our own little slice of apps that we like. Imagine dozens of Ping users like me, who share my taste in apps, recommending apps in my user network. And the more apps I buy, the more I am tied down to the Apple iOS platform and more I am not likely to switch to another OS no matter how much better. More importantly, with respect to Google, it negates the need for online searches. It is all done within the iTunes store.
Meanwhile, in Android land, Google has basically given away the keys to their app store kingdom to the telcos, who have no interest in maintaining or sustaining OS development. Oh, and rumblings suggest Google is about to enter the online Music store business.
I have said this before about Google. Google keeps trying to attack Apple where it is least likely to hurt Apple, and where Apple makes the least amount of money.
Gandhi ·
Edit to add:
Look for Ping to be rolled out to the App store in iOS 5.0 next summer.
famousringo ·
The number $0.29 has been kicked around as the average selling price of an app. IIRC, it was derived by dividing app revenues by total downloads when both were announced by Apple at the WWDC this spring.
Seems to suggest to me that while 75% of titles on the App Store are paid, somewhere upwards of 75% of downloads are free. It also means that while apps are crushing songs in unit sales, songs still have strong revenues on their side.
The real wild card is how much ads contribute to app revenue. It seems not so much that developers would rather give away an ad-supported app than sell it for $0.99, but ads do make a lot of those 'free' apps a little less than free.
asymco ·
That's right, the only info we have is the average selling price across all apps. Some have tried to infer the split by using an average price for all paid apps, but that ASP for paid apps comes from survey data not from Apple themselves so I don't yet embrace it.
Stark ·
This is critical, isn't it?
You can't compare paid-for music against free and paid-for apps.
How about showing 6 lines: 3 shades of blue for music (paid, free, total) and 3 shades of red for apps (paid, free, total) ?
asymco ·
It's not as critical as you might think. Firstly because free apps can still be revenue for the developer/artist/producer. Secondly, free apps can be hired to do the same thing that a song or video once did: entertain in small time niches. Consumption moving from passive to active entertainment is a very real threat to the livelihood of those who make and sell passive entertainment.
yet another steve ·
The music industry has been missing something here. Instead of embracing the music renaissance brought about by the net and the .mp3 player, they've been fighting it. For example, their reaction to the success of iTunes is to fight it by supporting every lameass competitive platform, and thinking that revenue netural lower volumes at higher prices is a good thing (as in the $1.29 pricing: bad because you are changing habits and yet not even making more money.)
Dear music industry: these were your good old days.
The ipod you wanted to tax now does a lot more than play music. But instead of focusing your efforts on making sure that every one with an ipod has music playing at all times, you've been fighting it.
The music industry has been fighting rather than promoting primary demand for its product, as if listening to music had an inherent lock on user attention and it was all about figuring out how to charge/charge more for it.
Not only is this, obviously, not going to bring back the CD and its margins... but this renaissance has run its course as well. The #1 media player (the ipod touch) is now more game player than music player.
They're still doing it... getting in bed with google. google! The company whose business model works best when all content is free. And is any cloud/subscription model going to work when music is just one thing your device does?
I'm sure they'll all sit around and blame Apple.
But Steve Jobs provided the only working, revenue producing model for music in the internet age. They should have accepted that the CD was dead, and worked on supersizing 99 cent songs into $2.99 albums.
Iphoned ·
Assuming that an average app price is just enough higher then of an iTunes songs to compensate for 25% of the apps being free, Apple should be getting about same revenue for apps as for iTunes by year's end which is around $3.6b or so. But this does't jive with recently- reported AppStore dev payment numbers. So I am guessing the real app download rates must be much lower, with the extra being free aps downloaded and deleted and othe such trial downloads.
Joshua ·
Damn! Great quality comments. If only the whole web was like this. The only thing it's missing is the Slashdot style funnies.
Jason ·
WELL SAID!!!!!!!!!!! Cheers!
Zane Shouldice ·
Considerably, the article is really the freshest on this valuable topic. I concur with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your next updates. Saying thanks will not just be enough, for the tremendous clarity in your writing. I will immediately grab your rss feed to stay abreast of any updates. Pleasant work and much success in your business efforts!