
10 billion Android Market downloads and counting - nod
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/10-billion-android-market-downloads-and.html
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pg
I'm dubious about that graph.

It's suspicious that it's a graph of cumulative downloads. Cumulative graphs
always go up nicely. But what matters is downloads per month. Someone with
good monthly numbers will rarely resort to showing cumulative ones.

It's particularly suspicious the way the number for December, which we're only
6 days into, lines up exactly where it would if they were seeing hyperlinear
growth. You'd have to time your post almost to the day to make it look so
neat.

I would be very interested to see an ordinary graph (i.e. without graphic
tricks to make it steep) of downloads per month. That would show us what's
really happening.

I wouldn't be surprised if what that graph showed was linear growth (which is
bad, because it means a decreasing growth _rate_ ), followed by a massive
spike in December due to a special promotion.

~~~
andrewjshults
It looks like the December bar (yellow) is actually for November if you take
each bar as a month (which lines up with the rest of the marked points). The
labeling on the graph is wrong (the yellow bar should be slightly below 10
billion and labeled as November). I'd like to see the downloads per month (and
especially see the paid downloads per month), but as a marketing tool, I'd bet
that 10 billion downloads sounds better than whatever their current downloads
a day rate is.

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nod
Personally, I think the 10-cent sale is _brilliant_. 10 cents motivates you to
put in your credit card number if you haven't - and then the difference
between 10 cents and 99 cents for other apps later is pretty trivial
psychologically.

I wonder if they are compensating these partners beyond the 10 cent price?

~~~
jcampbell1
I fully agree. Apple has externally boasted about how many apple accounts that
have associated credit cards. I image they follow this number closely
internally. I think Google is now starting to realize the importance of this
metric. Google should make getting customers to pay something a priority for
every product/division.

~~~
dagw
A much better approach might be to make a deal with the carriers and simply
have app store purchases show up on your phone bill. This way they get around
the whole credit card problem and the phones come ready to shop right out of
the box with the end user having to do anything.

~~~
andrewpi
The Android Market already does this for some carriers, for example T-Mobile.

~~~
abraham
And Sprint.

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lini
For a little perspective - the App Store passed 15 billion downloads back in
July [1]. Google seems to be catching up.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/07Apples-App-
Store-...](https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/07Apples-App-Store-
Downloads-Top-15-Billion.html)

~~~
estel
In October they apparently updated this figure to 18 billion at a rate of 1
billion / month.

[http://www.knowyourmobile.com/smartphones/smartphoneapps/New...](http://www.knowyourmobile.com/smartphones/smartphoneapps/News/1079564/18_billion_apps_downloaded_from_the_app_store.html)

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ryandvm
So... I'm curious to know what app market veterans think of this kind of
thing. Are fire sales like these actually helpful for fledgling apps or is it
really just a blip of sales and then back to business as usual?

I often lament that Google won't let me temporarily drop my Radar Livepaper
app to $0, but perhaps I'd be shooting myself in the foot by doing so.

~~~
dpcan
I've been selling for almost 2 years in the Android Market, have had millions
of downloads of my free apps, and tens of thousands of paid app sales.

P.S. I have not been invited into this special $0.10 club. I'm guessing
because my apps don't scale well for tablets at the moment.

Lowering my price in the Android Market has done nothing for me personally.
Running a sale may increase the download rate, but it seems to even out or
lose me money in the end. It doesn't increase enough to convince me to leave
my apps at a lower price.

HOWEVER, I feel that if I had the opportunity to go all the way down to, say,
$0.25, I would get tons of sales.

I probably won't run a sale again. The bottom line is that I make more money
when my apps are priced higher even though I sell less copies. So, being that
I'm in this as a business, and not a hobby, I have to stick with higher
prices.

~~~
eridius
Don't forget that even if you do make more money on the sale, you're also
massively increasing your customer base, and therefore your support costs, so
any extra money you make must be worth the increased support overhead for it
to be a worthwhile tactic.

~~~
abraham
Also potentially massively increasing the world of mouth marketing channel
though.

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ghempton
I wish you could actually price your apps at $.10

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psychedelicx
Offtopic - Any idea how to make a graph like that (sure doesn't look like
Excel!)?

~~~
th0ma5
you could take that graph out of excel by cut & paste, this makes it WMF
format I think on the clipboard? anyway, it is some kind of vector format, and
then paste it into illustrator or inkscape or something. i'm sure open office
can create clipboard data that is vector.

~~~
psychedelicx
Thanks! I'll try it in Inkscape.

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vijayr
why 10 cents? why not make those apps free, for those 10 days?

~~~
ryandvm
My guess is $0.10 might be cheap enough to motivate people to jump the "pain
in the ass" bar that is entering credit card data.

The fact that Apple forces iTunes sign-up before you can use the iPhone gives
paid iPhone apps a huge advantage over Android Market apps.

~~~
Kell
And it works... I just updated my Wallet account with my new credit card
number. It's been months that I was like "Oh... no I'm not buying that 2$
app... I'm to lazy to update my credit card". And well, now I have 10 new
great apps I bought for 1$ ! And ready to buy more.

Damn... I'm being manipulated and actually liking it :-).

