The Best Strategies for Cross App Store Publishing

The Need for Cross App Store Publishing and the Best Strategies to
Pursue

By Gert Jan Spriensma, Analyst at Distimo

Amazon Appstore

Apple App Store for iPad

Apple App Store for iPhone

BlackBerry App World

Google Play

Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

Distimo was founded to solve the challenges created by a widely fragmented app store marketplace filled
with equally fragmented information and statistics.

Distimo was launched shortly after the introduction of the first app store. App stores have clearly shown
since that time that they are the way forward for content distribution. The app store model offers an
enormous opportunity for developers to get their content out and dramatically improves content discovery
by consumers. However, the mobile market has long been characterized by fragmentation, which is
also displayed in the wide range of mobile application stores that were launched from 2009 on.

Distimo is a privately held company based in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Learn more: www.distimo.com

Distimo ©2012, some rights reserved

Distimo Publication - May 2012

NEW AND NOTEWORTHY

Many companies have tried to enter the mobile app distribution market over the past
few years, but only a handful of app stores have succeeded. After the initial success of
the Apple App Store for iPhone, it seems like we published news on the Distimo blog
nearly every week about another app store that went live. Now, after three years in
business, many app stores have failed and disappeared, while some late entrants like
the Amazon Appstore launched and quickly found success. This month’s publication
provides an overview of the current app store landscape and reveals strategies to help
developers successfully publish cross app store.

The major findings are:

• The average daily download volume among the top 100 most popular free
applications in the United States is 4M, while the average daily volumes in the Apple
App Store for iPhone and iPad are 82% and 20% respectively of Google Play (formerly
Google Android Market). The app volumes in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace
and Amazon Appstore are fairly small compared to the millions of downloads in the
other stores, and they are just 2% and 10%, respectively, of the volume of Google
Play.

• The way download volume is distributed differs largely per app store: in most
categories the free volume is higher in Google Play, while in others, the Apple App
Store for iPhone wins, including among the largest categories like Games.

• The revenue among the top 200 highest grossing applications in the United States
is distributed completely differently: the Apple App Store for iPhone is the largest
with a daily turnover among the top 200 highest grossing applications of 1.9M USD,
followed by the Apple App Store for iPad (64%) and Google Play (29%).

• The total number of applications across the six major app stores is 1.3M. There are
980K applications however, when looking at unique applications only. This means
that every application is published 1.3 times on average across the different app
stores. When looking at the top 300 applications, this cross-store ratio is much
higher. For example, 89% of the top 300 free and top 300 paid applications in the
Apple App Store for iPad are also available in the Apple App Store for iPhone.

• The top 10 most successful cross-store publishers in April 2012 include Rovio
Mobile Ltd., OMGPOP, Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Google, Microsoft Corporation,
Apple, ZeptoLab UK Limited, Disney and Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Distimo ©2012, some rights reserved.
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


THE APP STORE LANDSCAPE
Apple started the app store revolution in mid-2008 when it launched the Apple App Store
for iPhone with 500 available applications. Many developers recognized the opportunity
and started developing iPhone applications. And, as the number of applications grew,
the perceived value of the iPhone increased as there was basically an app for every
need available. Others followed Apple including many operators, device manufacturers,
OS developers and some independent parties. Nowadays however, the remaining main
players are almost all developing the OS, as well, since the companies that control the
platforms also control the successful app stores. The timeline below shows the growth
of the various appstores in the United States as well as some of the most important
milestone events.

Distimo currently tracks all of the most important app stores and these app stores
account for a total of 1.3M applications in the United States as of April 2012. The
Apple App Store for iPhone is still the largest store available with over 500K available
applications, followed by Google Play with over 400K available applications. Although
the gap between these two stores is still a significant 100K applications, Google Play is
growing at a faster pace. The applications in the Google Play store are not only aimed at
phones but also at tablets, while Apple decided to maintain two separate app stores –
one for iPhone and one for iPad. If we combine the number of available applications for
the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad, the total is 590K. This is lower than the sum
of both as one-quarter of all applications are universal (one package for both iPhone
and iPad). The other app stores follow on a respectable distance. The fourth largest
app store is Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, which is growing rapidly but has only 70K
available applications currently.



The most recent entrant, the Amazon Appstore, showed 10% growth in the past month
and now has 35K applications in store. BlackBerry App World appeared to come to a
halt, but recently increased their appeal with their port Android to PlayBook program.

WHO ARE ALREADY PUBLISHING CROSS STORE
There are currently 1.3M applications available in all app stores combined, however, a
large part of those applications are not unique, e.g. Facebook for iPhone, Facebook for
Android and Facebook for WP7 are essentially the same app. Multi-platform publishing
is increasingly becoming a need for publishers, because one platform is not sufficient if
you want to reach the majority of your audience.

Many successful publishers start to develop multi-platform immediately, e.g. Rovio
launched Angry Birds Space for Android and iOS at the same time. Moreover, despite
the fact that multi-platform development is expensive, small independent developers
that become successful on one platform also decide to go to other platforms like the
recent addition of the Instagram and Flipboard applications on Android show.

When looking at the six major app stores the sum of their application is 1.3M, however,
when looking at unique applications there are 980K applications. This means that every
application is published 1.3 times on average. This figure is naturally higher when
looking at the top 300 most popular applications. The graph below depicts the relations
per store. For example, the proportion of applications from the top 300 most popular
free and paid applications in Google Play that are also available in the Apple App Store
for iPhone is 37% or 222 applications.



This graph reveals that some stores are more interconnected than others. For example,
the Apple App Store for iPad and iPhone are highly interconnected, as are Google Play
and the Amazon Appstore. We also see that the relationship between BlackBerry App
World and Google Play seems to be stronger, which might be an effect of the “Port to
PlayBook” program. The top 10 most successful cross-store publishers include Rovio
Mobile Ltd., OMGPOP, Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Google, Microsoft Corporation, Apple,
ZeptoLab UK Limited, Disney and Adobe Systems Incorporated.

WHERE TO PUBLISH CROSS STORE
There are many other things that should be considered when publishing cross platform
aside from the sheer number of potential customers that are available on each platform.
For example, a known issue of Google Play is that Android users are relatively reluctant
to pay for applications. One of the reasons for this could be the lack of appealing
payment options, especially since the paid volume compared to the free volume is much
better in the Amazon Appstore. We offer three strategies for discussion that include: 1)
focus on a high number of users, 2) focus on revenue, and, 3) focus on a niche market.

Focus on a high number of users

If the goal is to get a high number of users; a developer or publisher would have to
go for free applications, because in all stores and in all countries the free volume is a
minimum of 10 times higher than the paid volume. You could try to monetize your users
by advertisement or a premium offering with in-app payments, however it is important
to remember that, if the user needs to be use an in-app purchase to unlock essential
parts of your application, the usage will be lower and there is a risk that users might
rate or review your app badly.

Using this strategy, you would need to start with Google Play because the volumes are
much higher than in the other app stores. The average daily volume among the top
100 most popular free applications in the United States is 4M, while the average daily
volumes in the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad are 82% and 20% respectively of that
in Google Play. The average daily volumes among the top 100 most popular free apps in
the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace and Amazon Appstore are fairly small - just 2% and
10%, the volume of Google Play, respectively.



You would need to opt for a two store strategy including Google Play and the Apple App
Store for iPhone in order to secure more than 50% of the free downloads.

Focus on revenue

The volumes of paid applications are much lower than free ones. The free vs. paid ratios
not only differ substantially from store to store, but also per country. This ratio is 11x in
the Apple App Store for iPhone in the US, while it is around 50x in the Apple App Store
for iPhone in China, for example.

You would need to go for applications in the Apple App Store for iPad, followed by the
Apple App Store for iPhone, Google Play, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace and Amazon
Appstore if you opt to pursue a one-off strategy. The reason the Apple App Store for
iPad ranks first is because of the higher selling price, which makes each user more
profitable. This rings true even though the revenues do not top the Apple App Store for
iPhone.

You would have to opt for a two-store strategy including the Apple App Store for iPhone
and iPad to secure more than 50% of the potential one-off revenue.

A publisher that aims for maximized revenue should consider an in-app strategy since
the majority of revenue in the most important stores is derived from applications that
feature in-app purchase. Although the one-off revenues in the Apple App Store for iPad
are high, the in-app revenue is considerably lower than it is in the Apple App Store for
iPhone. Therefore, the order changes in favor of the Apple App Store for iPhone for a
true revenue maximizing strategy. In-app purchases have only been recently introduced
in the Amazon Appstore and the effects have yet to be seen, but the paid volume history
up to this point suggests that the majority of Amazon’s consumer base is – in contrast
to the average user in Google Play – willing to pay. It is important to note that publishers
will forego a lot of potential customers as the Amazon Appstore user base is much
smaller, and the Amazon Appstore is currently only available in the United States.

The graph on the next page displays the revenue distribution among the different
monetization options per store. Regardless of the app store, more than 60% of the
revenue is derived from in-app purchase (all revenue derived from in-app purchases
when an app is free).

Opposed to the other strategies, publishers can secure more than 50% of the revenue
by only focusing on the Apple App Store for iPhone.



Focus on a niche market

The majority of the revenue is generated by games in all of the app stores, however,
there are large differences in what kind of applications are popular in the different stores.
Educational applications are relatively much more popular than in the other stores in
the Apple App Store for iPad, for example. Moreover, some types of applications are
only available on one particular platform. For example, personalization applications are
not available for the iPhone and iPad. The next page shows per category what store is
the best store to go based on the free download volume.

We see that in the majority of the categories Google Play is the winner, but in a few of
the most popular (Games and Entertainment) categories, the Apple App Store for iPhone
takes the lead. Please note that the widget category is not available in the Apple App
Stores. The Apple App Store for iPad wins in two categories because the revenues in the
in Education and News categories were a factor of three and 10 times higher, while the
download volume was only slightly lower than in the other app stores.



RECAP
This publication sheds more detailed light on cross-store publishing strategies. Distimo
believes that in today’s fragmented app store space developers need to publish
cross-store. Publishers who deploy the cross-store marketing strategy often discover,
however, that cross-store marketing brings with it another challenge, e.g. what if your
link to Apple App Store is opened by an Android user? To address this challenge, we
have developed and launched a new product – AppLink , a single, platform independent
download URL for apps across all channels. AppLink supports cross-store publishing
and will identify the device and send the user directly to the right app store. Moreover,
Distimo tracks the user and can finally give publishers detailed statistics about their
marketing campaigns and the effectiveness of different channels.

TOP 10 CROSS STORE PUBLISHERS
The top 10 most successful cross-store publishers across the six app stores we covered in
this report are Rovio Mobile Ltd., OMGPOP, Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Google, Microsoft
Corporation, Apple, ZeptoLab UK Limited, Disney and Adobe Systems Incorporated.



DISTIMO’S PAID FEATURED REPORTS: GAIN DEEP INSIGHTS INTO ALL MAJOR
APPLICATION STORES. STARTING AT €399
The reports are available for April 2012 and an annual 2011 report is available for
North America, Europe and Asia. In addition to the the major trends in the app stores,
each report covers an extra topic:

• The April 2012 report covers month over month pricing trends and provides more
insights into the daily download volumes in the major app stores including Google
Play. Moreover, it depicts per niche in which store you will gain most downloads
and shows the actual downloads to expect in the region.

• The annual 2011 report covers all major trends, in growth and in pricing among
others, in the app stores covering the period January 2011 - November 2011.



DISTIMO CUSTOM REPORTS

Aside from this free monthly publication, Distimo produces custom reports capable
of providing specific mobile application store analytics that are relevant to your
company. Custom reports are currently available for any country worldwide for the
Amazon Appstore, Apple App Store for iPhone, Apple App Store for iPad, Apple Mac
App Store, BlackBerry App World, GetJar, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store,
Palm App Catalog, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. Additional application stores will be
available in the coming months. To get a better idea of the type of data and metrics
that Distimo can provide, please visit our Report product page.

CONTACT US

For sales enquiries, please contact Remco van den Elzen, VP Business Development at
remco@distimo.com or call +31 30 82 00 567. For press enquiries please contact
Mindy M. Hull at mindy@mercuryglobalpartners.com or call +31 62 504 7680 (EU) or
+1 415 889 9977 (USA).

ABOUT DISTIMO

Distimo is the innovative app store analytics company built to solve the challenges
created by a widely fragmented app store marketplace filled with equally fragmented
information and statistics.

Distimo Report provides in-depth customized reports for carriers and operators and
offers valuable insight into important trends happening within different application
stores around the world. Custom reports are currently available for the Apple App Store
for iPhone, Apple App Store for iPad, Apple Mac App Store, Amazon Appstore, BlackBerry
App World, GetJar, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog, and
Windows Phone 7 Marketplace.

Distimo Monitor is a free, cross-platform, app monitoring tool for developers that
enables them to monitor their own and competitive applications across all app stores,
without any adjustments needed to their application’s code. AppLink is a first-of-its-
kind, easy-to-use, cross-platform app distribution service within Distimo Monitor that
provides developers with detailed insight into their app distribution analytics and their
app sales funnel.

Founded in 2009, Distimo is a privately held company based in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Follow us on Twitter, read our blog or learn more at http://www.distimo.com.

Disclaimer
This work is licensed under Creative Commons License “Attribution Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
Netherlands”. This license is available for download at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/nl/.
This license ables you to use, copy, spread, and build upon this work non-commercially, as long as you credit
Distimo and license your new creations under the identical terms.


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