In the history of high tech corporate incumbents facing market disruption, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop’s blunt, provocative “burning platform” memo, where he describes a blazing platform, upon which his company has poured gasoline and now must abandon for its very survival, has become an instant classic. While history will ultimately reveal whether Mr. Elop’s bold call to action was delivered in time to save Nokia, Flurry can look to trends from the app development community as an early indicator for whether it will support the new Nokia-Microsoft (“Nokiasoft”) partnership.
In 1985, Microsoft introduced the Windows operating system for personal computers. Leveraging a more open partnership model, Windows overtook the operating sytem market, with market share now exceeding 90%. As the 80s drew to a close, IBM had faltered as the world’s most valued brand in computing, leaving an opening for the combination of Windows and Intel, aka “Wintel,” to be associated with value to consumers.
In the United States, Thanksgiving weekend sales are closely studied to predict consumer spending for the upcoming holiday season. This year, NPD Group reported that the share of shoppers for brick-and-mortar increased by about 6 percent while online shoppers’ share grew by 44 percent. Further, according to IBM’s Coremetrics, Cyber Monday online sales already exceeded this year’s Black Friday by 31%.
Mass market consumer adoption of Apple iOS and Google Android mobile devices has attracted an unprecedented volume of content, delivered through applications. Because the majority of these applications downloaded are also free, many ecosystem players have assumed that advertising revenue models will dominate how these apps are monetized.
On October 5, 2009, CBS canceled “Guiding Light,” the longest running television drama in history, which began in 1952. Last month, CBS aired the last episode of “As the World Turns,” the Proctor & Gamble production that has been running for more than 50 years. Ad dollars allocated to soaps fell nearly 30 percent from 2005 to 2009, and then fell another 20 percent in the first half of 2010.
More than 30,000 games have been released in the iPhone App Store since its launch in July 2008. With titles that consistently dominate the Top Paid and Top Grossing lists, there is no question that the games category is the most lucrative category in the App Store. This report focuses on how Apple has affected the market share of U.S. video game and portable game revenue since the introduction of games sold through the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch.
Each month, Flurry leverages its data set collected from iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and J2ME applications to identify, study and share industry trends. Flurry tracks over 20,000 live applications and over 2 billion user sessions each month. Applications that include Flurry Analytics have been downloaded to more than 80% of all iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices. Additionally, each day, approximately one of out every five downloaded applications from the App Store and Android Market include Flurry Analytics.