Distimo can always be relied upon for some great analysis at the end of a month but their latest report on all of 2010 shows some interesting trends. 2010 was a big year for app stores and RIM has been making some good headway with 18,000+ apps now in App World. Still I find those numbers very deceiving since they include hundreds of redundant apps that do the same thing or perform a simple function like eBooks. My favorite stat was that the on a whole App World prices have declined about 24% on average over the year and the top 100 apps in App World have also declined 24%. That decline was only topped by Nokia’s Ovi App Store.
The other interesting trend was seeing that the growth in App World was fueled by psudo apps with the Reference & eBooks category seeing the highest growth at 733% compared to the category average of 268% growth. The runner up was themes at 653% growth which is nice to see. If anything that should show RIM how popular themes are to make sure they are included in the PlayBook. Here is the full breakdown and comparison with other app stores:
The top ranking free applications are no surprise with RIM dominating the rankings but the paid applications still sadden me. We still have a memory booster taking second place and a flashlight app in third.
All in all RIM saw some pretty impressive app store growth with triple digit app growth. Still as you can see in the report comparing where the growth came from in all these app stores most of them are not quality apps. That is why I think comparing the number of apps in app stores is futile and it is more about quality apps available.
What do you think of the report results? You can check out the full PDF copy of the report at this link on Distimo’s website.
barrist ( View Profile) - Posts: