Apple and Google app downloads reveal rate of smartphone growth

More than 50 billion apps have now been downloaded from Apple‘s App Store since it opened inJuly 2008, the company said yesterday — and Google is not far behind, announcing 48bn downloads from its Google Play store so far.
Together, the figures highlight the huge new business created by the explosive spread of smartphones over the past five years, with downloads running at around 1,500 per second across the two stores and generating millions for developers.
The 50 billionth app was downloaded by American Brandon Ashmore from Ohio, who receives a $10,000 gift card after downloading the word game Say The Same Thing — but that’s small beer compared with the $9bn (£5.9bn) that have been paid out to app developers, representing 70% of the app prices. It’s a gigantic new economy that can now make teenagers into millionaires and create entire new businesses. Apple, which takes the other 30% of the revenue, has generated $3.86bn.
Finnish company Rovio, which introduced its Angry Birds game to the App Store in December 2009 has since seen almost 2bn downloads worldwide on smartphones and tablets, while 17-year-old Londoner Nick D’Aloisio, sold his company that makes the Summly app to web giant Yahoo in March for an estimated £18m.
Apps have also been used to create new sources of publicity by musicians such as Björk, and even Olympic athletes. Usain Bolt’s app was downloaded millions of times last summer during the Olympics.
With close to 1 billion people using smartphones, and using them much of the time, apps have begun to change how we think about computing, argues Dave Addey, founder and managing director of Agant, which developed the UK Train Times app. “Desktop software used to be complex and would do lots of things. Now we think of apps as doing one thing really well, but individually focused. They’ve also changed the perception of pricing for software.” Where desktop software can cost anywhere from tens to hundreds of pounds, app prices are typically measured in tens of pence – or, frequently, are free.
Apps have proliferated dramatically: both Apple and Google boast around 800,000 through their online stores, while Microsoft’s Windows Phone Store has 150,000 and BlackBerry World about 205,000.
Yet for developers, the growth of the App Store has brought its own problems. The sheer number of apps available has meant getting noticed has become essential to hitting the charts, and so making money; that $9bn paid to developers is very unevenly distributed, with the vast majority going to a comparatively small number of developers. The importance of making a splash with an app has led to schemes outside the store in which third-party companies offer to “buy” positions in the top-selling or most-downloaded app charts.
For those on the Google Play store, the problem is piracy, leading to as many as 9 in 10 copies of games in use being pirated versions.
Apple’s insistence on taking 30% of any sales made through the App Store – including in-app purchases – has also led to clashes with large organisations, notably including Microsoft, which has declined to produce Office for the iPad, apparently because of disagreements about how to pay for it. The Financial Times also withdrew its app from the store in favour of a web version, protesting at the 30% take and Apple’s refusal to pass on details about subscribers.
Richard Dodd, of the British Retail Consortium, said: “This is a really sharp illustration of how rapidly the ways in which customers are choosing to shop and the things that they are shopping for are developing.”