App Store Turnover by Category
There have been some stories recently about how games continue to dominate the charts on the App Store and have even been increasing that lead. Seems like someone mentioned, or perhaps I just thought it to myself, that while games own the charts, they have a shorter lifespan than apps in other categories, and therefore have a smaller window over which to generate revenue. I’ve been wondering about this and decided to see if I could figure out whether or not this was true.
Fortunately I still have the scripts and data I generated last year when I was looking into the App Store category breakdowns.
Step one was to grab a snapshot of the charts from last year and compare them to the charts today. I should note before I get too far along that I decided to focus exclusively on the iPhone top 400 grossing charts for this post. Specifically April 20, 2012 versus April 20, 2013. So, the first thing we notice is that the Games category has indeed grown from 65.0% of the top 400 to 74.2% at the expense of every other category except News. Although News is almost certainly skewed given the events over the past week as we’ll see later. Social is second best at a whopping 4.0%. 12 of the 21 different categories are at 1% or less, and Medical and Travel apps are completely absent from the top 400.
The next thing I noticed was that there are 205 games appearing in the top 400 that weren’t there last year. 69% of the games in the top 400 are new to the charts. That would seem to indicate that there is a pretty big chunk of turnover in the games category. But then again, there are at least 55 games that appear in the top 400 both years, so it’s not automatically a given that a game has a limited time to make hay. That probably goes without saying when you think about Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, etc. But how much more staying power do apps in other categories have when compared to games?
If we take away games we’re left with 103 apps in the top 400. Of those, only 39 apps are new this year. Just 9.8% of the top 400 are new non-game apps. 37.9% of the total. That means that 64 non-game apps were in the top 400 both years. It would appear that the other categories have more staying power if only 37.9% are new versus 69% of the games. But, looking at the new apps in each category the numbers are all over the place because the sample size is so small. We really need to look at the top 400 chart by category to get a clearer picture.
| Category | Top 400 Overall | Top 400 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Then | Now | Change | New | new in category | |||||||
| Qty | % | Qty | % | Qty | % | Qty | % | Qty | % | ||
| Books | 5 | 1.2% | 4 | 1.0% | -1 | -20.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 203 | 50.7% | |
| Business | 9 | 2.2% | 3 | 0.8% | -6 | -66.7% | 0 | 0.0% | 211 | 52.8% | |
| Education | 5 | 1.2% | 2 | 0.5% | -3 | -60.0% | 1 | 50.0% | 236 | 59.0% | |
| Entertainment | 14 | 3.5% | 7 | 1.8% | -7 | -50.0% | 3 | 42.9% | 259 | 64.8% | |
| Finance | 2 | 0.5% | 1 | 0.2% | -1 | -50.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 200 | 50.0% | |
| Food & Drink | 0 | 0.0% | 1 | 0.2% | 1 | – | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | |
| Games | 260 | 65.0% | 297 | 74.2% | 37 | 14.2% | 205 | 69.0% | 264 | 66.0% | |
| Health | 10 | 2.5% | 7 | 1.8% | -3 | -30.0% | 3 | 42.9% | 178 | 44.5% | |
| Lifestyle | 5 | 1.2% | 4 | 1.0% | -1 | -20.0% | 2 | 50.0% | 249 | 62.3% | |
| Medical | 1 | 0.2% | 0 | 0.0% | -1 | -100.0% | 0 | – | 212 | 53.0% | |
| Music | 13 | 3.2% | 12 | 3.0% | -1 | -7.7% | 4 | 33.3% | 177 | 44.2% | |
| Navigation | 10 | 2.5% | 6 | 1.5% | -4 | -40.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 188 | 47.0% | |
| News | 3 | 0.8% | 7 | 1.8% | 4 | 133.3% | 4 | 57.1% | 245 | 61.3% | |
| Photo | 12 | 3.0% | 11 | 2.8% | -1 | -8.3% | 6 | 54.5% | 219 | 54.8% | |
| Productivity | 11 | 2.8% | 9 | 2.2% | -2 | -18.2% | 5 | 55.6% | 182 | 45.5% | |
| Reference | 4 | 1.0% | 1 | 0.2% | -3 | -75.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 218 | 54.5% | |
| Social | 16 | 4.0% | 16 | 4.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 5 | 31.2% | 198 | 49.5% | |
| Sports | 4 | 1.0% | 4 | 1.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 1 | 25.0% | 217 | 54.2% | |
| Travel | 2 | 0.5% | 0 | 0.0% | -2 | -100.0% | 0 | – | 211 | 52.8% | |
| Utilities | 10 | 2.5% | 4 | 1.0% | -6 | -60.0% | 2 | 50.0% | 229 | 57.2% | |
| Weather | 4 | 1.0% | 4 | 1.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 2 | 50.0% | 207 | 51.7% | |
| Of Total | |||||||||||
| Total | 400 | – | 400 | – | 244 | 61.0% | 4303 | 51.2% | |||
| Minus Games | 140 | 35.0% | 103 | 25.8% | 39 | 9.8% | 4039 | 50.5% | |||
The last column in the table shows how many new apps made the top 400 in their category versus last year. Games line up pretty closely with the overall chart with 66% versus 69%, but the other categories really aren’t *that* much better.
This is a little easier to see if we sort it like so:
The turnover in Entertainment, Lifestyle, and News (again possibly skewed) are very nearly that of Games, and the others aren’t that far behind.
It’s a little difficult to determine exactly what this all means. With only 39 new apps in the overall chart you might be inclined to think that app discoverability is broken as everyone seems to believe, or maybe there just aren’t that many quality apps coming out to supplant the old ones? But looking at the individual categories makes me wonder if games aren’t just concealing what’s going on in the other categories and people are finding other apps just fine. Surely not through the App Store app itself though, because that thing is a mess. One other thing to consider is that maybe for the bottom of the category charts we’re operating down in the noise floor where a few sales either way can result in a huge position change. It’s hard to say without actual sales data to examine.
I could regenerate this data and focus on just the top 100 apps overall and for each category and possibly eliminate the noise floor question, but instead, I’m going to bop back and take a close look at those 39 apps that managed to crack the top 400 apps overall. Here they are:
| 49 | Social |  |
Skype |
| 52 | Social |  |
OkCupid — social dating, meet new peop… |
| 80 | Health |  |
Touchfit: GSP |
| 130 | Social |  |
LINE |
| 149 | Education |  |
Toca Hair Salon 2 |
| 168 | Photo |  |
Video Star |
| 174 | Music |  |
Free Music Download Pro – Downloader and… |
| 180 | Lifestyle |  |
textPlus Free Texting + Group Text |
| 185 | Photo |  |
AfterLight |
| 204 | Weather |  |
Storm Shield |
| 206 | News |  |
Police Scanner+ |
| 231 | Productivity |  |
1Password |
| 237 | News |  |
Scanner911 Police Radio Pro |
| 246 | Productivity |  |
Evernote |
| 249 | Music |  |
Sing! Karaoke |
| 250 | Productivity |  |
Things |
| 263 | Entertainment |  |
Disney Junior Appisodes |
| 267 | Social |  |
Palringo Instant Messenger |
| 268 | Music |  |
Free Music Download Pro Plus – Free Musi… |
| 285 | Utilities |  |
Minecraft Skins Pro: Creator |
| 292 | Entertainment |  |
My Forged Wedding |
| 310 | Weather |  |
MyRadar Weather Radar |
| 311 | Health |  |
Lose It! |
| 312 | Photo |  |
Private Photo Vault – Ultimate Photo+Vid… |
| 317 | Productivity |  |
Dropbox |
| 320 | Social |  |
HowAboutWe Dating – Find Singles & Go … |
| 324 | News |  |
The Wall Street Journal. |
| 326 | Photo |  |
Wood Camera |
| 329 | Lifestyle |  |
The Magazine. |
| 339 | News |  |
5-0 Radio Police Scanner |
| 349 | Food & Drink |  |
Wine Spectator WineRatings+ |
| 351 | Health |  |
Full Fitness : Exercise Workout Trainer |
| 355 | Sports |  |
NHL GameCenter 2011-2012 |
| 359 | Utilities |  |
PokéBuilder – Build a Monster Cheat – F… |
| 365 | Music |  |
StarMaker: Karaoke + Auto-Tune |
| 366 | Productivity |  |
Triage: Email First Aid |
| 390 | Photo |  |
Over |
| 393 | Entertainment |  |
Live Esoteric Chat, Oranum |
| 399 | Photo |  |
picfx |
This is kind of crazy and really makes me want to redo this focusing on the top one or two hundred. There are only 3 new apps in the top 100 that aren’t games.
Three.
Everything else in the top 100 is a game or was there last year. It doesn’t get much better if we extend that to the top 200 where there are 9 whole new apps.
And finally recall that the News category contained four new apps this year and the only category to increase its representation in the top 400 overall. Of those four, three are police scanners. It’s probably safe to assume these apps saw a spike in downloads by people anxious to listen in on the heroic work being performed by the police officers in Boston recently. Had things gone otherwise we would likely have only 36 new apps in the top 400 this year.
So, I’m probably asking myself more questions now that I’ve looked this all over than when I started. What I think is happening elsewhere is that there is a lot of churn, but it’s outside of the top overall charts. I believe that some of that is that the good apps rightly deserve their positions on the top of the charts, but I think some of it is also a discoverability problem. There seems to be movement lower down the charts, but the very top is pretty fixed.
And, although apps outside of games do have a longer shelf life, it’s seems to be less than I imagined. At least lower down which again makes me wonder if there isn’t some visibility threshold they’re just not able to cross. Which, sadly, just seems to reinforce that notice that if you’re looking to hit the lottery on the App Store, then it’ll have to be a game.
I don’t mind games. I like them a lot in fact. I’d just like to see a greater representation of apps from other categories in the top 400. I believe there are quite a few apps out there that deserve a brighter spotlight but are being muscled out of the picture by games. A solution to the discoverability problem or even just a new chart from Apple showing us the top 400 apps that aren’t games would certainly help.
Hello excellent website! Does running a blog such as this take a great deal of work?
I’ve virtually no knowledge of coding however I was hoping to
start my own blog in the near future. Anyhow, should you have
any ideas or tips for new blog owners please share.
I know this is off topic nevertheless I simply wanted to ask.
Cheers!