App Store could surpass total iTunes music sales by March
Anyone who has visited the Apple website in the past few days knows that sometime in the very near future, the total number of apps sold through the iTunes App Store will go over 10 billion. After all, Apple is conducting a contest in which the person who buys that magic 10 billionth app will win a US$10,000 iTunes gift card, so many of us are taking a frequent peek at the numbers.
What most people might not realize is that the iTunes App Store is poised to reach the 10 billion app mark in less than half the time it took for iTunes to sell 10 billion songs. An insightful analysis by Asymco published yesterday shows that while it took approximately 67 months from the opening of the iTunes Store for the number of music downloads to hit 10 billion, only 31 months will have elapsed between the day the App Store opened and the point where 10 billion apps have been sold.
The article, by analyst Horace Dediu, supplies another fascinating statistic: more than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold -- iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Dediu points out that not only are more than 30 million apps being downloaded each day, but that rate is accelerating quickly. By March, the number of app sales should exceed the cumulative number of music sales.
Dediu ends the article by pointing out three conclusions: apps are a new medium that will impact all other media; as the number of apps on a device increases, apps create increasingly higher switching costs for users, and; app consumption is increasing so rapidly that the market will soon overshadow the PC software market.
It looks like it's a great time to be in the app market as a developer.
[via AppleInsider]
