1,000,000,000 Downloads?

Apr 15, 2009

Apple is soon to announce the billionth download from their App Store - an impressive achievement. Or is it?

It's tempting to think of every download as a success - after all if someone has gone out of their way to install an application there is an assumption of some form of need is being met.

Certainly Apple has made downloading content on their platform a breeze - an iPhone with a reasonable 3G connection can take a user with an itch to scratch from discovery to download to installation to use in the time it takes order fresh tacos de pollo from my local, and delightfully lo-fi Mexican diner. But I digress.

There are numerous ways to measure a successful marketplace: not least success in attracting professional and hobbyist developers to your platform. But just how successful is the 1 billion downloads from a user experience perspective?

This presentation from Pinch Media drawing on iPhone analytics data highlights that (only) ~20% of user's ever return to use an application the day after it is installed (it's worth taking these figures with a pinch of salt not least because they are based on a subset of all iPhone applications). There are many ways to interpret this data: the harshest being that ~80% of user's are so unimpressed with their application that they never return to it. What are the costs associated with downloading something that ultimately reveals itself to have little or no value?

The biggest cost is the time wasted in exploring whether the application meets a need - after installation some will require little more than a cursory glance to reveal its dud-edness whilst other's demand more of an investment - for example inputting data; remembering to look up passwords the next time you're next to your laptop. For some installing something new will increase their level of anxiety, as they make associations between the phone's behaviour, other non-phone related events and the simple act of installation - "soon after I downloaded the xxx app, I started receiving mail-outs from the yyy mailing list" type association. Whilst it might seem trivial to someone on an unlimited download contract - there is a cost to moving bits around, not least the opportunity cost for the network provider in prioritising someone else's bits. This may not be much of an issue on networks with overcapacity - but as more of our life becomes digital, when more of the stuff we carry includes a large storage capacity and is itself connected, we're going to see a growth in personal pre-cached/super-distributed data - your bits moved around in anticipation of what you might need next. What might seem like a small gain in convenience today will be difficult to give up tomorrow. We are in effect moving towards the 'now' generation, if indeed we're not there already. In a 'connected' world the cost of having everything of digital importance in your life on hand with next-to-zero latency will be the thing that separates the haves from the have-nots (That and being able to afford going off the grid). At the micro level there's also the additional latency the next time your device synchonises with your computer or cloud service.

But just because an application has a shelf-life of less than a day doesn't mean it's not a success. For some the act of window shopping+installation is a goal in itself; for others satisfaction will come from being the first in their peer group to have an application installed, from being the first to recommend it to friends - regardless of whether they actually 'use' it. If this seems superficial to you dear reader, it is, but don't assume for a minute this is a bad thing.

We're not there yet - but the interesting trend to watch will be the mainstreaming of just-in-time discovery and consumption of highly focused and contextually useful applications. Think applications with an expected, useful installed life measured in minutes not days.

A billion downloads?

Whatever.

What comes next is far more interesting.

Photos? Mobile tech literate disciples in Ulan Bataar.

And yes there are one or two other app stores out there not least: Blackberry's App World; Google's App Marketplace; Windows Mobile Marketplace; Palm's App Catalogue; and Nokia's soon to launch Ovi -Store - a handy comparison guide here.

Location:
 Mongolia »  Ulan Bataar Keywords:
 Apple | application | iPhone | store