10 billion Android Market downloads and counting | Hacker News Reader

10 billion Android Market downloads and counting

googleblog.blogspot.com

89 pointsnod44 comments

I'm dubious about that graph.

It's suspicious that it's a graph of cumulative downloads. Cumulative graphs always go up nicely. But what matters is downloads per month. Someone with good monthly numbers will rarely resort to showing cumulative ones.

It's particularly suspicious the way the number for December, which we're only 6 days into, lines up exactly where it would if they were seeing hyperlinear growth. You'd have to time your post almost to the day to make it look so neat.

I would be very interested to see an ordinary graph (i.e. without graphic tricks to make it steep) of downloads per month. That would show us what's really happening.

I wouldn't be surprised if what that graph showed was linear growth (which is bad, because it means a decreasing growth rate), followed by a massive spike in December due to a special promotion.

> linear growth (which is bad, because it means a decreasing growth rate)

Isn't linear growth associated with constant growth rate? Serious question, I'm not sure if I'm not missing some understanding here.

If you grow from 10 to 15, 20, 25 etc., each time, even though you are adding 5, it is a smaller percentage of what you had. In this example, you would be adding 50% to go from 10 to 15, then 33% to go from 15 to 20, then 25% etc. Growth is linear, but growth rate is decreasing.

Ok, I understand now, thanks :).

... whereas if your downloads per time month is a constant proportion of your total downloads to date, e.g., next month the downloads will total 2.5% of the total downloads to date ... and that keeps happening every month, then:

  * the per-month downloads will grow exponentially as you graph it over time
  * the cumulate number of downloads to any given date also will grow exponentially

Is that common terminology? It sounds like you're defining "growth rate" as "exponential growth rate." To me, if you're seeing 10, 15, 20, 25, etc. every month, then your monthly growth rate is a constant 5. You're still growing, it's just that your growth every month isn't a function of your size last month.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_rate

They do mention the following:

with a growth rate of one billion app downloads per month

Maybe I read the graph wrong. But there are only 11 spikes for 2011. So they probably haven't reported December downloads.

Well, the article was posted on Dec 6th, so yes, they probably haven't reported December downloads

It looks like the December bar (yellow) is actually for November if you take each bar as a month (which lines up with the rest of the marked points). The labeling on the graph is wrong (the yellow bar should be slightly below 10 billion and labeled as November). I'd like to see the downloads per month (and especially see the paid downloads per month), but as a marketing tool, I'd bet that 10 billion downloads sounds better than whatever their current downloads a day rate is.

I can't think of any good reason not to make the raw numbers public, down to say hourly granularity.

A lot could be learned from making such an organization of the world's data (cough) public.

"A lot could be learned from making such an organization of the world's data (cough) public."

Given Google's business model, that seems like a pretty good reason not to make the raw numbers public.

I agree with you, but Apple does the same thing. They add not only the downloads since 2008 when they had the App Store for the first time, but also the money they've given since then to developers, as if that would be relevant anymore. What's relevant for developers now is how much they've achieved in the last few months at most.

From:

"This past weekend, thanks to Android users around the world, Android Market exceeded 10 billion app downloads - with a growth rate of one billion app downloads per month"

I think it's pretty obvious that the graph is cumulative. They do mention the rate is accelerating, and a cursory glance at the graph tells that the delta between months appears to be increasing as well. I agree, though, that complementing it with a non-cumulative, per-month graph would be informative and interesting.

Personally, I think the 10-cent sale is brilliant. 10 cents motivates you to put in your credit card number if you haven't - and then the difference between 10 cents and 99 cents for other apps later is pretty trivial psychologically.

I wonder if they are compensating these partners beyond the 10 cent price?

Google has to be giving them something out of their own pocket; unless they've got a special deal with their processors the $0.10 is being melted down for cigar cases at Visa and etc. before Google sees any of it.

You should ask one of the devs whose app is being featured, don't know if Google allows them to answer though

I fully agree. Apple has externally boasted about how many apple accounts that have associated credit cards. I image they follow this number closely internally. I think Google is now starting to realize the importance of this metric. Google should make getting customers to pay something a priority for every product/division.

A much better approach might be to make a deal with the carriers and simply have app store purchases show up on your phone bill. This way they get around the whole credit card problem and the phones come ready to shop right out of the box with the end user having to do anything.

Why don't I pay you through your phone carrier? Not bad for me, but you'd probably have to split your profits with Verizon.

Google already gives the money made on app purchases to carriers.

The Android Market already does this for some carriers, for example T-Mobile.

And Sprint.

"10 cents motivates you to put in your credit card number if you haven't - and then the difference between 10 cents and 99 cents for other apps later is pretty trivial psychologically."

If the difference between 10 cents and 99 cents is pretty trivial psychologically, why would this stunt persuade anyone to put in their credit card number if they haven't done so for 99 cent apps?

Well it's 89 cents saving x 100 apps which is about 90 dollars worth of possible savings to tempt you. And there's every possibility that you'll miss out on some of them because they only last for a short period so they don't even have to deliver on their promise in traditional money-back voucher/coupon tradition.

For a little perspective - the App Store passed 15 billion downloads back in July [1]. Google seems to be catching up.

[1] https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/07Apples-App-Store-...

Google will catch up, as it did in marketshare. But the cost of Google's open approach, and big gains in smartphone marketshare, is a corresponding growth in its malware, currently growing 4X faster than iOs.

http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/05/android-malware-over-ios-...

In October they apparently updated this figure to 18 billion at a rate of 1 billion / month.

http://www.knowyourmobile.com/smartphones/smartphoneapps/New...

So... I'm curious to know what app market veterans think of this kind of thing. Are fire sales like these actually helpful for fledgling apps or is it really just a blip of sales and then back to business as usual?

I often lament that Google won't let me temporarily drop my Radar Livepaper app to $0, but perhaps I'd be shooting myself in the foot by doing so.

It's hard to say in this instance, Google has historically been very hands-off when it comes to the Market. I think this is the first time they've explicitly done a sale like this; as opposed to devs operating on their own.

This stuff seems to work incredibly well on Steam - I don't see why it wouldn't help here. The big value isn't just the front-page promotion, it's also the time limited sale for a bargain price.

I suspect the main effect in the long term will be to boost the app's ranking in its category (because of how many downloads it got) and in search results (based on downloads, active users, ratings, or whatever algorithms Google actually uses). Whether the app will manage to take advantage of that and hang in there, or will fade back to obscurity, will probably vary from app to app.

I've been selling for almost 2 years in the Android Market, have had millions of downloads of my free apps, and tens of thousands of paid app sales.

P.S. I have not been invited into this special $0.10 club. I'm guessing because my apps don't scale well for tablets at the moment.

Lowering my price in the Android Market has done nothing for me personally. Running a sale may increase the download rate, but it seems to even out or lose me money in the end. It doesn't increase enough to convince me to leave my apps at a lower price.

HOWEVER, I feel that if I had the opportunity to go all the way down to, say, $0.25, I would get tons of sales.

I probably won't run a sale again. The bottom line is that I make more money when my apps are priced higher even though I sell less copies. So, being that I'm in this as a business, and not a hobby, I have to stick with higher prices.

Don't forget that even if you do make more money on the sale, you're also massively increasing your customer base, and therefore your support costs, so any extra money you make must be worth the increased support overhead for it to be a worthwhile tactic.

Also potentially massively increasing the world of mouth marketing channel though.

I wish you could actually price your apps at $.10

Offtopic - Any idea how to make a graph like that (sure doesn't look like Excel!)?

you could take that graph out of excel by cut & paste, this makes it WMF format I think on the clipboard? anyway, it is some kind of vector format, and then paste it into illustrator or inkscape or something. i'm sure open office can create clipboard data that is vector.

Thanks! I'll try it in Inkscape.

why 10 cents? why not make those apps free, for those 10 days?

I can see google wanting to have your credit card number in file to ease future purchases ;)

My guess is $0.10 might be cheap enough to motivate people to jump the "pain in the ass" bar that is entering credit card data.

The fact that Apple forces iTunes sign-up before you can use the iPhone gives paid iPhone apps a huge advantage over Android Market apps.

And it works... I just updated my Wallet account with my new credit card number. It's been months that I was like "Oh... no I'm not buying that 2$ app... I'm to lazy to update my credit card". And well, now I have 10 new great apps I bought for 1$ ! And ready to buy more.

Damn... I'm being manipulated and actually liking it :-).

I believe if you make an app free on the Android market you cannot then go back to charging for that app, it is a one way trip.

Paid apps are permanently associated with your Android Market account, unlike free apps.

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