Consumer spending during the holiday retail season, beginning with Black Friday, is among the most important predictors of U.S. economic health. Since the late 90s, tracking online sales of websites like amazon.com on the first Monday after Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, has become a second important barometer. The National Retail Federation, the world’s leading retail trade group, extrapolated that total spending for this year’s Black Friday “weekend,” Thursday-to-Sunday, was up 0.5% from a year ago.
Flurry Blog
The data in this report is computed from a sample size of over 3,000 applications, 45 million consumers and 4 platforms: Apple (iPhone and iPod Touch), Blackberry, JavaME and Google Android. Each day, Flurry tracks over 15 million end user sessions across apps that have included its analytics solution.
There is a lot riding on the Motorola Droid. Verizon is looking for an answer to the iPhone, which has driven enviable data ARPU growth for AT&T. According to Rita Chang of Ad Age, the Droid is supported by a $100 million integrated marketing campaign, the largest in Verizon history, running through the end of 2009. Google’s long-term bet on mobile, underscored by its recent $750 million offer to purchase Admob, demands that the Android OS propagate. Meanwhile, HTC enjoys an early mover advantage with its G1 and 1.5 generation of Android handsets.
The data in this report is computed from a sample size of over 2,500 applications, 40 million consumers and 4 platforms: Apple (iPhone and iPod Touch), Blackberry, JavaME and Google Android.
In this analysis, Flurry looks at user retention by international territory. As the App Store expands internationally, studying differences between user behavior across territories is becoming more important.
This article comes from the Flurry Smartphone Industry Pulse, August 2009.
The data in this report is computed from a sample size of over 2,000 live applications and over 200 million user sessions tracked each month across Apple (iPhone and iPod Touch), Google Android, Blackberry, JavaME platforms.
This blog post further explores how key changes in the ecosystem, driven by Apple, have enabled the growth of the New Middle Class. Simply put, a year ago, the new darlings of mobile gaming - companies like Bolt Creative (Pocket God), Backflip Studios (Ragdoll Blaster, Paper Toss), Storm8(World War, Racing Live) and Firemint (Flight Control, Real Racing) - could not have flourished in mobile.
The data in this report is computed from a sample size of over 1,600 live applications and 60 million consumers across four platforms: Apple (iPhone and iPod Touch), Google Android, Blackberry, JavaME.
To understand the viability of the New Middle Class, we decided to compare companies and apps across Top Sellers lists on traditional carrier decks vs. the App Store. Below is the distribution of the now well over 60,000 apps in the App Store across categories. Wading through thousands of applications, we narrowed our focus to the largest App Store category, games.
The data in this report is computed from a sample size of 200 applications, 25 million consumers and four platforms: Apple (iPhone and iPod Touch), Blackberry, JavaME and Google Android.
The ability for developers to offer in-app-purchases within paid iPhone apps, as part of iPhone OS 3.0, creates exciting new revenue opportunities. At the same time, the option to sell virtual goods, additional game levels, subscriptions and other forms of micro-transactions, creates more complexity around how to best monetize a given application. Developers who can quickly and effectively measure and optimize the impact of these new pricing options will emerge as winners in the next phase of the iPhone economy.
With Flurry Analytics, the guess work can be completely removed and developers can measure with precision the optimal up-sell point in their trial application.
Among your strongest marketing plays in the App Store is to offer a free trial of your game or application. Not only is the App Store designed for this, but also it’s the best way to reduce consumer risk in trying your application, with the goal of eventually getting that user to purchase the full version. Think: money. And from our data, it’s among the most effective moves you can make. Here’s a motivational example using customer data collected using Flurry’s mobile app analytics service in their iPhone apps.
The glut of applications in the App Store has made application discovery a top concern among companies releasing iPhone games and apps. Last week, 148 Apps reported that more 30,000games and applications are available in the store, already 5,000 more than the 25,000 announced by Apple when it previewed its iPhone OS 3.0 software on March 17.
The App Store’s unprecedented success has certainly created “poster-child” success stories like iShoot and Trism (for the record, we love and play the both of those games!). At the same time, Apple recently announced that over 25,000 applications are available in the iPhone App Store and that over 50,000 paid developers are in their SDK program. Given these figures, many wonder if increased competition has created an insurmountable barrier-to-entry for additional success stories.