How big is the AppStore?

I want to share some insights about the size of the AppStore, as some of you asked me to. I’ll be more specific focusing on US iPad Paid rankings and volumes.

All 7 Readdle apps skyrocketed in charts worldwide. On the 1st of August we celebrated Readdle’s 5th anniversary by slashing the prices for the best productivity apps in the AppStore and making some buzz about it.

Since all 7 Readdle apps were in the top 100 US Paid iPad chart during the sale, we were able to gather pretty good statistics about the current state of the App Store. The graph below shows the number of downloads corresponding to the application rank.

Please note, that these numbers are approximate, because the App Store has some complex algorithms behind the ranking system that takes into account various factors and the number of downloads is just one of them. However, this should give you an idea of the AppStore market size.

There are few interesting things in this graph that I want to highlight.

1. The number of downloads between top 5-10 and top 10-15 differs to a great extent.
You need to get almost twice as much downloads to get from 15th place to the top 10. Do you want to reach the 5th spot? Double your downloads again.

2. In order to be in top 20, you have to have 1000 downloads per day.
The competition is stiffer then ever before. What does it mean for an application developer? They need to have a very good launch or sale promotion to get there. Good word of mouth helps, but it would be insufficient to keep your app at the top.

I hope that you will find this data helpful for your marketing and development decisions. If you want to discuss it just drop me a line at denis@readdle.com

P.S. I would like to thank every person who supported us during these long 5 years.

Denys Zhadanov
@denzhadanov