APRIL 24, 2009 • Apple Inc.’s App Store passed the 1 billion download mark, based on 21 million iPhones sold to date. The ratio of purchased downloads to free downloads is estimated to be between 1-to15 and 1-to-40.
Impact: The App Store model from Apple is very different from the video game model of Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. Apple allows almost anyone to publish Apps and as a result the market passed the 38,000 application mark in less than a year. The game manufacturers have been much stricter about what they allow on their platform, even as services like Wii Ware, Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network open up their platforms top more independent developers. It will be interesting to see how Apple’s wide open model evolves going forward. Right now, under the metrics of the App Store, a single purchased product will generally have very low overall revenue.
