Sure, the occasional zombie game for the iPhone or iPad can be quite amusing, but when your application actually becomes the zombie, then it’s no longer fun times. ‘Zombie Apps’ is a term used by mobile analytic firm Adeven. These ‘Zombie Apps’ are applications that have managed to sit in the App Store with no downloads, are invisible to users and have no ranking. AppTrace, a new tool developed by Adeven, shows that there are 400,000 of these apps infecting the store, out of a total of just over 650,000. That’s approximately 2/3 of the entire App Store. The company’s CEO Christian Henschel spoke to Gigaom about their findings, saying that he believes it is “really tough for smaller, independent application developers” to be discovered in the current iOS App Store.
Christian Henschel states:
“The reality is there are only a couple of thousand apps that really make some kind of downloads. This is based on Apple’s closed system — it’s tough to discover those kinds of apps. You don’t have proper search, so the only way to discover new apps is through the top listing. If you’re not on those lists, it’s not sure that you’re being discovered by anyone else. The top 25 tend to be the same companies who spend millions of dollars to get to the top of those lists. If you’re an independent, small app publisher, then it’s really tough to be discovered.”
Apple announced in June that there had been a total of 30 billion downloads from the iOS App Store, and that $5 billion had been paid out to the App developers. If exposure had been made available to these ‘Zombie Apps’, then perhaps the total number of downloads would be higher, along with the payout.
Apple has reportedly been working continuously behind the scenes to improve the discovery of content on the App Store. Earlier this year, Apple bought Chomp, a search engine for mobile applications. The price had not been disclosed, but it had been reported by Bloomberg that the Curpertino, California-based company paid about $50 million USD for Chomp. It expected that this acquisition is going to enhance the discovery of new applications and content on the App Store.
AppTrace has many competitors, with the likes of Keen.io and Count.ly, except AppTrace is trying to take a different approach. AppTrace is, so far, easy to use, and has an aesthetically-pleasing interface. They claim to be faster, more comprehensive and better sourced, with data being refreshed every six hours at the latest.
Henschel goes on to comment about his new release:
“We’re not only measuring success within the app, but also within the ecosystem. We will also soon be launching a feature where you can compare apps against each other, which is something that’s not available at the moment.”
This certainly seems promising for current and upcoming app developers. At least we can see that the issues with application promotion have been addressed, and are slowly, but surely, being dealt with. I am no developer myself, but even I can see the use for these new features – I’m especially looking forward to the integration of Chomp. Do you guys feel that this has been a worthwhile investment?
