What is App Store's Largest Market?

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Grumps, Aug 15, 2010.

  1. Grumps

    Grumps Well-Known Member
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    Feb 2, 2009
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    #1 Grumps, Aug 15, 2010
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2010
    Earlier today I was researching on the current iOS device distribution worldwide to determine which market should I focus my marketing budget or perhaps even the localization. Indie developers like us could not afford to cater for every market out there. Handling task like advertising and language localization may add up to a large sum if we do not properly target our key market. Cash-flow is the key to everyone's business and you would want to save every dollar you can.

    So what can we do? We will focus on the top iDevice market in the world. Ad distribution channel like AdMob provides a monthly metrics data that help us keep track of the device distribution trend around the world. While it may not be entirely accurate because it is probably tracked by the ad request that are integrated within some app, there is no harm getting an estimate of the current trend.

    iPhone & iPod Touch User Distribution (May 2010)
    1. United States (43%)
    2. United Kingdom (9%)
    3. France (6%)
    4. Canada (5%)
    5. Japan (4%)
    6. Australia (4%)
    7. Germany (4%)
    8. China (2%)
    9. Republic of Korea (2%)
    10. Italy (2%)

    iPad User Distribution (May 2010)
    1. United States (58%)
    2. Japan (5%)
    3. United Kingdom (4%)
    4. China (4%)
    5. Canada (3%)
    6. Germany (3%)
    7. France (2%)
    8. Australia (2%)
    9. Italy (1%)
    10. Switzerland (1%)

    These stats only reflects iDevice distribution and may not help to provide an estimate of App Store utilization and important information such as App Store spending. So it will be really helpful if there's any developer out there who would like to share their own list of target largest market.
     
  2. Syndicated Puzzles

    Syndicated Puzzles Well-Known Member

    Grumps,

    Your question has no answer. Apps take off in certain countries usually because they hit a soft spot with the locals. So each app would definitely have a different order of countries that moved the app up to number one.

    One thing I can tell you is the 5 countries that are the easiest to achieve a number 1 ranking are all Ma..... countries.

    Macedonia
    Madagascar
    Mali
    Macau
    Mauritius
     
  3. Syndicated Puzzles

    Syndicated Puzzles Well-Known Member

    Grumps, You shouldn't edit your original post to something totally different this makes the next person responding look like an idiot!
     
  4. Grumps

    Grumps Well-Known Member
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    @Syndicated Puzzles: I was totally researching on that and stumble across Admob's metric data. But your post is still very much related to my first post :)
     
  5. Anyone know of a breakdown by device? Sometimes I wonder how much effort needs to go into performance on a 2G/3G phone.
     
  6. Evan.Greenwood

    Evan.Greenwood Well-Known Member

    Aug 17, 2010
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    Here are some metrics :http://metrics.admob.com/

    Here is some demogrpahic breakdown: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/02/25/6-ways-iphone-and-android-users-differ/

    Here is another world-wide market breakdown: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/18/where-in-the-world-are-apples-78-million-handsets/#more-16552

    @xenoclone 2nd Gen iPods are still very big, it's users are younger and play more games, but I'm giving up on the iPhone 3G, it's just too slow for now and I think a lot of it's users are not playing games anymore. There are still loads of 3G's out there, but personally it just isn't profitable for me to cater for them.

    I was recently told that 2nd Gen and iPhone 3G comprise half of the iPhone market. So if you can please them it will really help you.
     
  7. Thanks for the info, Evan. My games tend to run great on a 2nd gen iPod but start to sputter a hair on the 3G. And of course now you can't filter out devices by generation, but rather which processor they have -- as far as I can tell.

    My general observation is that the folks playing my games tend to be on iPods. But definitely useful to have those numbers. :)
     
  8. Evan.Greenwood

    Evan.Greenwood Well-Known Member

    Aug 17, 2010
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    We tried filtering out a game by processor... it worked, so people with older iPhones couldn't even see it on the Appstore... but then they would download the game on their computer and the game would refuse to install to their device...

    Basically as far as I can tell there is no workable filtering... it doesn't even say on the device which generation it is so even telling people with 3G's not to buy the game won't help (because they don't know which generation their device is).

    Allot of games which used to run fine on 3G's now sputter a whole lot, so I think their owners are getting used to it, or have been forced to upgrade :(
     
  9. TrueAxis

    TrueAxis Well-Known Member

    Sep 7, 2009
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    I've been disappointed with how much cpu power has been lost under iOS 4 for the iPhone 3G...

    Our next game Space Tripper after months and months of optimization ran really well on iOS 3.1 - I was really pleased with how smooth it ran, then under iOS 4 it splutters...

    Even though Apple have added new gl commands that have speeded certain things up, it's very ironic that implementing them the game is slower than what it use to run at. This is a shame really because if the 3G ran at the same speed when on 3.1 then games could of done more things than before.

    The iPhone 3G still has a large section of the market but I guess Apple don't care about that device now, they don't even make them or sell them anymore - but I guess things have to move forward and I guess Apple want to make people upgrade to sell more hardware.
     
  10. sam the lion

    sam the lion Well-Known Member

    Jan 12, 2009
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    :( I have an iPhone 3G and play a lot...
     
  11. robkwok

    robkwok Member

    Aug 22, 2010
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    Yeah I totally agree. I haven't even upgraded to os4 and my phone has become too slow to use - now i almost have to upgrade to iphone 4
     

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