From the Press Release
Quick Facts:
- 578 thousand new apps predicted to enter the App Store over the next year (by July 2015)
- 80% of apps in the App Store are ‘Zombies’ this month and did not noticeably rank
- More than 21% of apps that entered the App Store are now “Dead” apps that no longer exist
- By category, Book (27%), Entertainment (25%) and Utilities (25%) have the most dead apps
- Games are 2x as likely to be pulled as apps in the general software category
- Gameloft develops the most number of top-ranked apps in the App Store
adjust, a leading app analytics and attribution company, today released a new ”App Lifecycle” report on Apple’s App Store in celebration of the store’s birthday, featuring insights on the birth, life and death of a typical app. The data was sourced from adjust’s apptrace.com database in July 2014.
“As the App Store and the apps within it mature, more than ever it becomes essential for marketers to look at new techniques to re-engage existing users and get ROI. The report that we’ve released today shows the development of the App Store and highlights the critical need for marketers to engage key audiences for ensuring the longevity and visibility of their app,” said Christian Henschel, CEO and co-founder of adjust.
Birth of an app
Currently, there are 1,252,777 apps available in the App Store, and as many as 60 thousand apps are typically added every month. Although, there was a significant increase in the number of iPhone apps releases in March 2014, doubling that of the previous month. The number of iPad-only apps decreased over the past year (see graph 1), indicating increased simultaneous multi-platform launches.
In 2013, 453,902 new apps were released in the Apple App Store, exceeding adjust’s prediction of over 435 thousand new apps by 4 percent. Almost 15 percent of apps in the store were removed during the year, which adjust labels as “Dead Apps”, due to violating App Store terms and conditions or voluntarily pulled down by developers, leaving 396,341 available apps with a release date in 2013. Over the next year, adjust predicts that 578 thousand new apps will enter the App Store (by July 2015).
Death of an app
Since the Apple App Store was born, over 1,601,413 total apps have been uploaded. Of those apps, 350 thousand were pulled from the store, which means that more than one in five apps (21.8%) are no longer available.
By category, Books (27%), Entertainment (25%) and Utilities (24.9%) have the highest percentage of Dead Apps, whereas Games have the highest absolute number of Dead Apps (65,643 apps at 21.7%). adjust reports that there was no correlation between app crash reviews or app ranking with being removed from the App Store.
Zombie apps
In 2012, adjust (known as adeven at the time) coined the term “Zombie App” to describe an app that does not attract enough measurable attention to regularly receive rankings in the Apple App Store top lists. The line between living and Zombie Apps was set conservatively – an app had to rank on any of the 39,171 App Store top lists on two out of three days over the month.
App discovery is still a primary issue for developers as the number of Zombie Apps have steadily increased, and last month only one fifth of apps were sufficiently visible. There were 79.6% Zombies Apps in June 2014 (953,387 apps out of 1,197,087) compared with 70.4% of 884,917 apps in June 2013 and 75.2% of 1,020,604 in December 2013.
To learn more or view the report, visit the official Adjust website.