App Store Turns 1

The app store just turned one year old! And to celebrate, Apple have added a little promo page to iTunes, which you can find via this link on the iTunes store front page.

And here is part of their colorful celebratory page, created with Apple’s usual great design flair.

Apple have “gathered together some of our favourite games and apps“, and to my delight, Oz Weather is one of the 32 apps they have chosen to feature in their apps list – appearing there in 10th spot.

What caused me to discover this? Today’s sales jumped up by 40%. Although sales can be quite variable day to day, this change seemed to be a bit bigger than usual, and I wondered if there was some material cause. Having been tipped off, it didn’t take long to find it. 🙂

As usual I will be watching carefully to see whether this has an extended effect on sales levels, and report back in due course.

Amendment 20th July – it has been pointed out to me that this 1st birthday page had been in iTunes for a week already. So I can’t attribute the sales jump to this after all. Looks like I’m getting a bit lax in my iTunes monitoring!

Oz Weather Apponomics – Part 6

This is the latest installment tracking the progress of the Oz Weather iPhone app in the iTunes app store. (Part 5 installment here.)

The latest stats, to 3rd July 2009:

* Total app downloads: 44,800
* Net app revenue: AUD$68,000 (US$54,400) – net of 30% Apple share and 10% Australian GST
* Average User Rating: 4.5 stars – from 6 ratings of latest version, 4 stars – from 790 ratings of all versions

The following graph shows a complete history of more than 7 months of daily sales records, since launch on Nov 1st 2008.

The associated Australian overall paid apps ranking is as follows:

The most immediately noticeable feature of these graphs is the big “crash” in sales and rankings starting at the beginning of June, and then the sudden recovery on 26th June. What could have caused these big changes in fortune?

• The Fall – At the beginning of June, Oz Weather’s main head-to-head competitor (Pocket Weather AU) was given “Staff Favourite” status in the Australian app store, which meant that it appeared on the front page of the app store with that endorsement. So at the same time that Oz Weather sales and rankings tanked, Pocket Weather sales and rankings  took off. While Oz Weather reached its nadir at 68th ranking, Pocket Weather peaked at around 29th ranking.
• The Recovery – On 26th June, Apple launched the iPhone 3GS in Australia. Oz Weather sales tripled overnight and its ranking jumped from 60th to 20th, while Pocket Weather’s ranking remained much steadier, hovering around the 40th to 50th ranking range. My surmise as to what caused this is Apple’s in-shop promotions which include Oz Weather as one of the featured apps, and a demo version is pre-installed on some of their iPhone shop demo units. This means that new iPhone customers who visit an Apple store to make their purchase get well exposed to Oz Weather.

Interestingly, the cause of both the fall and the recovery are apparently Apple’s own promotional mechanisms, over which individual developers have (as far as I am aware) absolutely no control. Either you are picked or you are not!

Overall, of course, Apple’s influence has been much more of a benefit than a hindrance to Oz Weather, and I am of course very grateful for that. And I certainly do not begrudge the fact the Pocket Weather was given a staff favourite pick by Apple. Like me, they’ve put a lot of time and effort into their app, and deserve their day in the sun as much as anyone else.