

60% of the apps in the App Store have never been downloaded - bconway
http://www.phonearena.com/news/400000-apps-in-the-App-Store-have-never-been-downloaded-says-report_id32943

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axlerunner
Something is not kosher with these numbers. Anyone going through the effort of
publishing an app to the App Store will at least download it themselves and
have at least a few friends or family members do the same.

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aapl
Pure speculation: maybe these apps are actually ebooks or some other kind of
static content just packaged as an app and they are generated by an automatic
or a semi-automatic process. Assuming that the article is correct, of course.

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mikeash
The article is not correct. The original source says these apps get 0-10
downloads per day. So they could be getting over three thousand downloads a
year and still fall into the category that the article says has "never been
downloaded."

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tst
I think these numbers are based on one blog post the company made[1].

They wrote:

"[...] defined that an app has to hold a position for at least 7 days to be
considered as "ranked". That was the case for 265,959 apps from the 18th of
July 2012 to 25th of July 2012. To the remaining 410.023 apps off the ranks,
we refer as app zombies, leading a life outside a prospering market."

and

"[...] in theory app zombies can still be downloaded, we concluded that an
average zombie is getting _zero to ten downloads a day_ , depending on the
country."

[1]: <http://www.apptrace.com/blog/2012-08-06/inside-zombie-land>

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dasil003
If it's true (which I'm highly skeptical of) it should be encouraging because
it means the median income that you can hope to capture is quite a bit higher
than the averages people run based on totals.

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roymabookie
Makes me feel better about my 350 downloads...

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evilduck
I've got a small "scratching my own itch" app with a paid and ad version on
the store for 6 months, no marketing at all really other than being in an
underserved (and small) niche. Paid version has had about 75 downloads, the ad
version has a few thousand. By the article's definition, it's "never been
downloaded". However, even at such a low download rate, it's basically paid
for the cost of putting it on the store, by the end of the first year and
assuming the download rate stays the same it will have made a small return.

While it's not going to replace my day job, it was still worth doing IMO.

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bertomartin
80-20 principle working here. Not to be picky, but I think most app must've
been downloaded at minimum a few times, if it's even by friends of the app
builder.

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nutjob123
This is highly unlikely and probably flat out wrong. Placing any app in the
app store will result in a few immediate downloads just from being listed.

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mikeash
"...we concluded that an average zombie is getting zero to ten downloads a
day, depending on the country."

This is not even remotely the same thing as "never been downloaded". I've
flagged the article for blatant stupidity. Do people not think before they
click the up arrow?

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calciphus
To be fair, it only has 12 points at this time.

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mikeash
Still enough to get it well up the front page, though.

