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The App Store is an ever-evolving and rapidly expanding eco-system.  Today I’m taking a look back at a snapshot of The App Store from exactly one year ago to see what’s changed since then, and to find out if there’s anything I can learn from those changes moving forward.  I’m focusing my comparison on the Top 100 Paid and Top 100 Grossing charts since those are the charts most developers want to be on.  There are a few websites that keep historical data from The App Store, so I was able to put together the charts from Sept. 17, 2009 as well as pricing and category data for those apps.  Here’s a quick comparison of how some key numbers stacked up:

 

Race To The Bottom

One key observation we can gather here is that the Race To The Bottom is continuing.  The average price for both the Top 100 Paid Apps and the Top 100 Grossing Apps has decreased significantly since last year.  This is mostly due to the large increase in the number of $0.99 apps making their way into the charts.  The average price drop in the Top 100 Grossing Apps is weighted even further by the 11 free apps that use an In App Purchase business model.  I found this average price drop surprising.  Before analyzing the data, I was expecting App Store users had grown accustomed to purchasing apps and would be more willing to branch out beyond paying $0.99.  As it turns out, customers are just becoming more accustomed to purchasing $0.99 apps.

The Test of Time

Next I looked at what apps were able to sustain their popularity and actually appear on the Top 100 Grossing or Top 100 Paid chart both today and one year ago.  It’s a common chicken-and-egg theory among developers that apps on the charts get more downloads BECAUSE they are on the charts, and that it’s difficult to break into the charts because you can’t get enough downloads to do so unless you are ON the charts.  I’ve also heard some devs assume that most App Store shoppers don’t browse the Top 100 Grossing charts.  This makes sense, especially based on the last observation that iPhone users seem to be purchasing more $0.99 apps, and there are a lot less of those in the Top 100 Grossing.  Because of this, I expected to see a lot of apps from the Top 100 Paid apps stand the test of time and not so many from the Top 100 Grossing.  I was wrong.  There were actually 24 apps that were on the Top 100 Grossing charts both on Sept. 17, 2009 and Sept. 17, 2010.  There were only 19 apps that appeared on the Top 100 Paid charts on both Sept. 17, 2009 and Sept. 17, 2010.

A Closer Look at the Carryover Apps

Next, I wanted to know what I can learn from these ‘carryover’ apps.  These apps are clearly the créme de la créme and the developers behind them have built sustainable businesses in The App Store.  Here are the apps:

There are a couple interesting notes about the carryover apps from the Top Grossing.  Whereas 60% of the Top Grossing apps today are Games, only 45% of The Top Grossing apps that carried over were games.  Also, the majority of Top Grossing carryover apps were priced $3.99 or less and there was magical price of $2.99 with 6 apps charging this much.  The majority of the Top Paid apps were, of course, priced $0.99:

It’s also interesting that EA has four games in the Top Grossing carryover apps and GameLoft has two combining for a majority (six) of the 11 games that have carried over.  In the infancy of The App Store there was a lot of talk about when the heavyweights would take-over the platform.  They’re here and it appears they know what they’re doing.

I’ve just touched on a few interesting statistics here, but I think there’s a ton more that can be learned from studying these carryover apps.  How are they sustaining their sales?  Do they share a common business model or promotion strategy?  Feel free to expand on this post and write about your own conclusions.