Understanding the App Store

06 Aug 2011

I’ve been working on tools to better understand the app store, they’ve been made available as part of Appiity.

My underlying motivation is to try and help developers make better sense of the app store (different categories, countries, competitors, etc.). It’s also scratching a personal itch of mine around application discovery by providing a historical performance context around each application.

I’m looking for feedback and to engage with more developers.

 

Key Features:

• 30 day trailing performance for any ranked application (actually have > 12 months worth of data but am only actively exposing a months worth)
• top paid / free / grossing chart positions vs. pricing (measure the actual impact of a price adjustment on gross position)
• ratings per app per version (what impact does releasing new versions have on chart positions)
• apps per developer (how are all the apps from a particular developer currently or historically performing)
• iPhone/iPad/Mac app tracking

 

If you’ve published an application or are actively developing one, I’d like to hear your thoughts. I’m quite passionate about helping developers better understand their target market/competitors, and this is my first attempt at addressing some immediate needs.

If you’re looking for an alternative way to discover quality applications, I’d encourage you to check it out as well. I’ve found the historical performance of an application and it’s developer to be a good indicator of it’s quality. We all know that dropping your price certainly doesn’t improve the quality of your app and yet it often can boost your ranking.

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