Apple rejections that wont improve the quality of iPhone apps in the AppStore

I think Apple does a great job reviewing iPhone apps for the AppStore BUT there are some inconsistencies that drive me mad.

How can it be that Apple approves an app and later when submitting an update (or even bugfix) they reject it for something that already existed in the app that was approved. This looks pretty inconsistent to me.

Pinpoint Lite and Pinpoint Pro are two apps we use to gage the "ease" of iPhone app submissions (or sometimes the pain related to iPhone submissions). These two apps are in the AppStore for month now and they have been approved without a problem.

12 days ago I submitted the Pinpoint apps with some new features.

1. First, it took Apple 12 days to look at the update
2. It was rejected for a reason that has nothing to do with the update.

The apps where always using the MapKit API and require Internet connection to function correctly. Actually, the apps are not checking whether Internet is available and they never have and Apple did not see that as a problem and accepted the apps several when first submitted. Now with the update Apple reviewers decided that it does not comply to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) and therefore thy rejected the update.

That's would have been great feedback when the first version was submitted. However, rejecting the update will not improve the user experience because the current app that is still available in the AppStore does not comply to the HIG either and people can still download the app. Even worst, if a developer has a bugfix that would actually improve some other aspect of the user experience it still could be rejected for the previously overlooked issue. Unfortunately, this inconsistent process does not improve the user experience at all. Buggy app versions stick around in the AppStore longer because any improvement that was rejected for the wrong reason will need to join the "review queue" again.

So why is Apple so inconsistent in their review process? Please leave a comment if you had similar experience.

Top 10 Grossing Android Apps

The Apple App store recently added a top grossing list to go alongside top free and top paid lists. This I'm sure is in response to the race to the bottom phenomonem. App developers attempt to have their app featured in the top paid and free lists as users browse these lists first when looking for apps to download. These lists are based on download numbers alone and therefore developers priced their app as low as possible to obtain high download counts. The top grossing list attempts to highlight apps that are still achieving high download numbers combined with a high price. I like to think of this list as demonstrating apps that deliver high value for their price.

The Android Market place has yet to introduce such a list but as it shows a download count range for each app we can put together our own approximation. The graph below shows (click on the graph to zoom in) the top 10 grossing apps in the US Android Market place based on estimated downloads and current price. The top app at just under $300,000 is the IM app Hello IM!, followed mostly by utility apps and a few games. If you find this kind of snippet analysis on the Android Market Place you should follow us on Twitter or drop into androidstats.com

iPhone dominates the smart phone market in front of Nokia

The latest AdMob report for August 2009 shows that the iPhone has overtaken Nokia in the smart phone race. This is surprising even for us who always thought that the iPhone will rock the Nokia foundation but we expected that this would happen not before 2010.

Here is a slideshare with our own predictions and trends around Mobile OS and Mobile Browsing Platform.

Mobile OS and Mobile Browser Trends and Prediction

View more documents from jTribe.

Four steps to turn an iPhone idea into a successful iPhone app

From Idea To iPhone Application

View more presentations from jTribe.

Android Market Monthly Revenue Revealed

The Apple App Store is worth $200M monthly says GigaOM compared with $5M in the Android Market Place. The guys over at Larva Labs estimate it's even less and we agree. We've now managed to calculate that number and it comes in a lot lower than expected.

We've been collecting data on the Android Market for the past 8 months and publishing it on androidstats.com. We have been able to watch the Android Market grow to it's current size of just over 7000 apps and almost 3000 publishers, recording every movement made within the market.

The Android Market also gives an indication how many times an app has been downloaded, for example RetroDefense has been downloaded somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 times. It is important to remember that Android users are able to try out an app for 24 to 48 hours without their credit card being charged. Therefore the actual sales an app is making is somewhat lower than the reported download count.

Considering all this, along with app price and days on sale within the market, we have been able to determine the monthly revenue from the (US only) Android Market to be closer to $1M USD.

Android has a long way to go to get anywhere near the size of Apple's App Store both in terms of revenue and size. Apple hit 65,000 apps in July compared to 7,000 apps in the Android Market Place today. We have plenty more data from androidstats.com which we plan on releasing regularly on this blog so make sure you grab our feed.

Android Market Stats App

We've be running the AndroidStats website for the past 8 months and have collected a large amount of historical data about Apps in the Android Market Place. We have seen the site become more and more popular over that time and have therefore decided to start taking it to the next level.

So yesterday we have released an Android App that allows you to do all the same functions from the website, directly on the phone. You can:

* Find Apps performing well in the Biggest Weekly Movers Top 20
* Find bargain Apps in Yesterday's Price Changes
* See Graphs of each App's history overall and within their category
* Go directly to download the App in the Android Market on the phone

Since we released the app it has been snapped up by a lot of Android users. This only spurs us on to add features. We have category browsing from the phone coming in the next couple of days. We also have some exciting features planned for the website so subscribe to the website and stay tuned!

Can a free version boost sales of a paid iPhone Applications in AppStore?

Many iPhone publishers found that a dual release of a free lite version and a paid pro version of an iPhone app pays off.

Our own experiment...

We wanted to see if the free/pro approach works and have released a location sharing utility called Pinpoint for the iPhone. The Pro version of Pinpoint was released 3 weeks ago with expected download figures. The app was prices at US$2.99 and had reached approximately 150 downloads in 3 weeks.

Our experiment was constructed to see whether a free Lite version of Pinpoint could increase the sales figure of the paid Pro version. We also wanted to see whether we could boost the downloads of the paid app to get it into one of the Apple top lists. So we lined up three things

1. new free lite version

2. drop the price one tier (from US$2.99 to US$1.99)

3. Show messages on our existing apps to our existing user base

As @quamen pointed out it would be not trivial to see the impact of the free app because we have changed 3 variables at the same time. So, to isolate the the impact of the free app we have experimented with prices drop (2) and promotion messages (3) before and know what the impact of each of those changes is. So we should be fine to filter out the impact of the free app release (1).

after 5 hours...

Pinpoint Lite was approved by Apple on the 11th of August and reached 100 downloads within the first 5 hours. For tracking and user notification about the newly released app we are using shoutmob.com.

after 12 hours...

Over the last 12 hrs people have downloaded Pinpoint Lite more than 300 times.

Downloads in Pinpoint Pro have more than doubled. Knowing the impact of the price drop and promotion messages we can say that the impact of the free app alone was approximately 100% increase in paid app downloads.

So far we can confirm the boost and the effectiveness of shoutmob user notifications.

after 2 days...

I did not expect that the Lite version would be so popular. It made it in less than two day in the AppStore to #30 in Australia under Free Navigation apps and #46 in the US. That's a nice side effect but was not goal of the experiment.

The Lite version was downloaded 630 times so far.

So, how is the Pro version going after 2 day?

The conversion rate is lower than we thought. We are converting less then 10

% of the Lite users to upgrade to the Pro version. The price drop should start wearing off by now and all the downloads from now onwards come from Lite to Pro upgraders.

For the Pro version we can see the same download figures as in the first 3 days in the AppStore. The graph shows the downloads in the last week for the paid app. The impact of the price -drop and Lite version release are quite obvious.

[UPDATE]

after 3 days...

The Lite version is still on the "new Releases" page in the AppStore. Downloads decreased slightly compared to yesterday. I would expect that once we get on page 2 that downloads will decrease by 50% - lets see.

Pinpoint Lite ranks #42 in US and #28 in Australian free navigation apps.

Pinpoint Lite was downloaded 1000 times within three days with approx 340 new users a day.

The Pro version is almost unchanged. Even the price-drop should have worn off by now we see similar download numbers as in the previous two days.

The paid app is still going OK and I suspect that most downloads come from people

upgrading from Lite to Pro. Here are some graphs based on

shoutmob realtime analytics.

The total usage per day which trends upwards.

[UPDATE 2]

after 4 days...

The Lite version is no longer on the "new Releases" page in the AppStore. As expected, the number of new has decreased.

Pinpoint Lite ranks #43 in US (-1) and #27 in Australian (+1) free navigation apps.

Pinpoint Lite was installed 1300 times within four days. With 280 new users on day 4 which is 80% compared to the day before .

The Pro version the same user rate as the day before.

From here it will be really hard to stay in the top 100 with the free version.

More downloads than installs

One interesting fact is that the Apple reports show higher numbers than shoutmob. Where Apple reports showed 480 downloads shoutmob showed 350 users. So some 130 users have downloaded the free app but never used it. While Apple's report shows download numbers shoutmob shows the number of app that have been used. So there seem to be people who download free apps but do not use it. Looking at my own app download behaviour I sometimes download in iTunes but may take another day before I synchronise with the iPhone. Maybe that is what other people do too.

[UPDATE 3]

after 5 days...

Pinpoint Lite ranks #44 in US (-1) and #32 in Australian (-5) free navigation apps.

Pinpoint Lite was installed approx 1500 times within five days. With 260 new users on day 5 which is 92% compared to the day before .

The Pro version has now increased the number of users by 33% compared to the previous day.