Home Breaking Down Apple’s AppStore Stats [Infographic]

Breaking Down Apple’s AppStore Stats [Infographic]

This morning, much of the tech world stood still as Steve Jobs delivered his keynote address at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, introducing the next-generation iPhone. As usual with a “Jobsnote,” Steve took some time to let the audience know where the company stood with a few back-patting statistics. Jobs said the iPad has added 8,500 native apps since launching two months ago – a growth rate nearly three times that of the iPhone and iPod Touch two months after the launch of the AppStore in 2008.

iPad Apps Growing 3x Faster iPhone Apps Did

The iPad sold 2 million units in its first 2 months on the market, or 3 iPads a second, as Jobs happily pointed out today at Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. During that same period, apps for the device have been released at a rate of roughly 140 per day. According to our calculations, it took the iPhone and iPod Touch more than twice that time to accrue 8,500 apps, growing at a slower rate of 56 per day.

The faster growth of iPad apps is likely due to the fact that the AppStore is not new, and many developers – having long since recognized the potential of the app market – have been building apps for many months already. It is not likely, however, that iPad app creation numbers will pass those of the iPhone and iPod Touch any time soon. The pair of devices has added 31,500 apps since the iPad launch – a growth rate of 525 per day.

iPhone Apps Still Sell Far Better Than iPad

The fascinating other half of this statistic is that while iPad apps are growing much faster than iPhone/iPod apps did initially, iPhone and iPod apps sold much better during their first few months, and continue to today. In the first 90 days of the AppStore’s existence, 100 billion downloads made their way to the handheld devices. If the iPad is going to break that number, it will need to sell 65 million apps this month, nearly double its 2-month sales figure of 35 million apps sold.

App sales and the number of available apps have been increasing exponentially since the launch of the AppStore, and the iPad launch helped the last two months become the fasted period of growth for apps yet. In just two months, 1 billion apps were sold, up to 5 billion from 4 billion back in early April. The total number of apps also increased by 40,000 apps, from 185,000 to 225,000.

Is Price to Blame?

The iPad accounted for 21% of app growth, but just 3% of app sales – a figure that compliments why iPhone and iPod touch users install twice as many apps than iPad users. According to a study by Nielson, users of the handsets average around 37 apps on their device, while today Steve Jobs mentioned iPad users average just 17 per device. A mobile research firm out the Netherlands found that iPad apps run an average price of $4.67, whereas iPhone and iPod touch apps are $.80 less at $3.87 – an obvious deterrent to iPad app sales.

Apple also says it receives 15,000 app submissions a week, and that 95% of apps are accepted through within a week of being submitted. Based on these figures, 114,000 apps or updates to existing apps were pushed into the AppStore in the last two months. Since only 40,000 new apps were added during that time, this means that roughly two-thirds of app submissions are updates to existing applications.

A Lucrative Market

It’s no wonder the updates keep rolling in, because developers are making good chunks of change on the AppStore. Steve Jobs says Apple has paid developers over $1 billion in AppStore revenue shares, or over $4,400 per app on average. If Apple has paid out over $1 billion to developers, that means it has pocketed over $428 million from its 30% cut of app sales.

At its current growth rate, the AppStore should pass the 10 billion downloads mark in early April 2011. However, with the continued exponential growth seen in the infographic above, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the AppStore break this number as soon as the end of the year.

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