This is an attempt to make an argument (based on assumption as highlighted) on Android’s developer/app ecosystem success.
Android success across multiple devices, price bands and countries has been a tremendous story in recent times. The platform’s wide acceptance has even forced developers to jump onto the bandwagon. And the developers has been well compensated with success from surging downloads and revenue from its consumer base. Of course, this is not true of all the developers or apps. If you make a great app you will get equally greater downloads and revenue, but if you are the one who is hoping for some magic with mediocre to less than mediocre app then let me break it to you…that ain’t happening…..
The proof lies in the numbers below. App Brain [1] (approx as of Feb, 14) suggests the following download distribution of apps. They further claims that 21% of apps in the Android store are low quality apps.
| Source - App Brain |
| Range | # of Apps | % Contribution of Apps per Segment |
| <100 | 390,000 | 34.5% |
| 100-1000 | 280,000 | 24.7% |
| 1K-10K | 251,000 | 22.2% |
| 10K-100K | 150,000 | 13.3% |
| 100K-500K | 40,000 | 3.5% |
| 500K-1M | 14,000 | 1.2% |
| >1 M | 6,400 | 0.6% |
| Total | 1,131,400 | |
Further, I am taking the liberty of assuming an average download figure of each bracket or segment of download spectrum. . For the over 1 million segment of apps Priori [2] Data estimates an average 6.2 Million Downloads per app.
| Source - App Brain | Assumption |
| Range | # of Apps | % Contribution of Apps per Segment | Average |
| <100 | 390,000 | 34.5% | 50 |
| 100-1000 | 280,000 | 24.7% | 550 |
| 1K-10K | 251,000 | 22.2% | 5500 |
| 10K-100K | 150,000 | 13.3% | 50000 |
| 100K-500K | 40,000 | 3.5% | 230000 |
| 500K-1M | 14,000 | 1.2% | 650000 |
| >1 M | 6,400 | 0.6% | 6200000 |
| Total | 1,131,400 | | |
With understanding of the estimated downloads per segment we can fill the gaps for all the other segments, finally resulting in the overall downloads at Google Play to be around/over 67 Billion downloads as of February, 2014.
| Range | # of Apps | % Contribution of Apps per Segment | Average Dls | # of Dls Per Segment | % Dl Contribution |
| <100 | 390,000 | 34.5% | 50 | 19,500,000 | 0.03% |
| 100-1000 | 280,000 | 24.7% | 550 | 154,000,000 | 0.23% |
| 1K-10K | 251,000 | 22.2% | 5500 | 1,380,500,000 | 2.06% |
| 10K-100K | 150,000 | 13.3% | 50000 | 7,500,000,000 | 11.19% |
| 100K-500K | 40,000 | 3.5% | 230000 | 9,200,000,000 | 13.72% |
| 500K-1M | 14,000 | 1.2% | 650000 | 9,100,000,000 | 13.58% |
| >1 M | 6,400 | 0.6% | 6200000 | 39,680,000,000 | 59.19% |
| Total | 1,131,400 | | | 67,034,000,000 | |
No surprises here….The above clearly demonstrated that not all the apps makes download or revenue…., but a big chunk of the downloads comes from few key apps.
This is not to conclude that only few apps have opportunities but to rather suggest that if you want success with any platform(s), you will need to ensure that you make a quality app. Since the tip of the app pyramid is generally large,( i.e. few apps contribute to a large portion of download/revenue) therefore a developer needs to ensure that the more efforts a developer puts in the higher return he/she can expect.
Please Note - As mentioned the above analysis is based on few assumption and I would love to hear from the reader on what they have to say - Do you agree, don’t agree or don’t care. You can leave the comments or (preferably) email to me.
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[1] App Brain - http://www.appbrain.com/stats/android-app-downloads
[2] Priori - http://prioridata.com/
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