From 500 Apps to 650,000

The US continues to be the single largest market for apps - but the rest of the world is catching up

As the Apple App Stores celebrates its fourth birthday, Distimo has released a report taking a look back at its development, from 500 apps to more than 650,000.

That proliferation comes with its downsides - it's forced down the number of downloads per app for the top 200, to 8.4m in July 2012 from 15.4m at its height.

However, the number of daily downloads increased from 7.7m to 16.8m over the past two years, for top 200 most popular free apps per country. For paid downloads the number increased by 13 per cent, while the average selling price declined by 16 per cent - leading to a 5 per cent decrease in net revenue.

But for the top 100 highest-grossing apps in all countries, the total revenue more than tripled over the past two years. The increase is driven by in-app purchases - the proportion of revenue derived from 'freemium' apps featuring in-apps increased from seven per cent to 68 per cent. And in turn, the growth of in-app purchases has been driven by gaming apps. About 21 per cent of all free games feature in-app purchases - but when looking at the 300 most popular free apps in each category in the United States in June 2012, 77 per cent of those games features in-app purchases. 

Some 26 per cent of the free downloads worldwide originated from the US in June 2012. The top 10 countries for downloading the top 200 most popular free apps are the US, China, Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Australia and South Korea.