Christmas Boom for the App Store

Monday, December 28, 2009

Santa Clause would have had to work some serious overtime this year if it were not for Apple´s App Store. Thankfully given the ease of use at the store for both the iPhone and iPod Touch, he wasn´t forced to carry each App down the chimney himself. According to Flurry, the Internet´s leading tracker of App analytics, November to December saw an increase of 50% in app downloads as opposed to the still impressive 15% from October to November. 50% is a huge number and the month still has 5 days left with a number of people undoubtledly using the store for the first time. Christmas Day downloads were up 1000% from the 24th of December with iPod Touch downloads exceeding those of the iPhone for the first time. Clearly with the contractual demands of AT&T and other providers worldwide the iPod Touch makes a more sensible Christmas gift than the iPhone.

Teenagers, the primary market for the iPod Touch, download and delete more apps than older demographics and the one day increase is predictable but still staggering. Parents were clearly driven to the iPod touch following the reduction in price from same time last year.

While Android app downloads were also up 20%, largely due to Motorola´s Droid handset, Apple´s App Store continues to blow them out of the water. Whether or not this will continue following the release of the Google Phone remains to be seen, but executives at Apple seem quite calm and expect a huge first quarter in the New Year as well.

If there is a lesson here to developers it is that pre-Christmas releases of new apps are essential to enjoy the flood of users opening presents on the 25th of December.