Today, UK design firm ustwo has launched PositionApp, an iPhone application that provides data regarding the top 300 apps in the App Store from the last 6 months. The price of the app would have been $7, but AdMob (well, Google technically) is sponsoring the app so that it is free for the next two months.
Coupled with its launch, ustwo also provided MobileCrunch with some exclusive graphs showing which app categories have been most popular over the last 6 months. Unlike most App Store data, this data comes directly from scraping iTunes, which means that it is a 100% accurate assessment of the App Store. Anyone interested in the App Store should hit the jump and check out what PositionApp has found.
PositionApp is a simple application: ustwo crawls the App Store on an hourly basis and collects data from the top 300 apps across all categories and geographies. They’ve been doing this for 6 months and have now launched an application which enables you to see, in graphs and numbers, what apps have been successful for the last 6 months and what rankings they’ve held. The user interface is slick, but I found that I actually wanted even more data than this app had.
The app is kept up-to-date in real-time so PositionApp will provide you with the ability to check how your app is doing (should it be in the top 300) compared to others. Of course, it is a niche application and likely won’t ever be in the top 300 itself (ironic, isn’t it?), but developers will find it as a good on-the-go resource to tracking App Store successes and failures — or more accurately, successes and near successes.
PositionApp comes with more in-depth features such as country-by-country tracking so you can see how your favorite apps do in different markets. It also lets you see who the biggest movers are, which is a good way to get ahead on
The data that ustwo has been scraping also provides additional insights into the App Store. They put together some graphs to show MobileCrunch readers what app categories are the most popular, both free and paid. The graphs (shown below) show clearly that the App Store is dominated by games (over 50% in paid and 40% in free). Next up is Entertainment applications, followed by Utilities.
After that, it gets dicey. On the free side, Lifestyle and Music applications are clearly doing well (each with about 5% of the top 300). However, there is no clear winning category on the paid side after games, Entertainment and Utilities.
Perhaps equally as interesting are the categories doing the worst. Sports, Navigation, News and Travel are all doing fairly poorly among other paid categories. In free, Weather and Finance can be added to that list as well.
It’s important to remember that many apps go into the top 300 simply because of low price points (Games) and that high-priced applications don’t tend to get enough sales to make it to the top 300 (Navigation). That said, the numbers are surely interesting.
You can download PositionApp on iTunes here.
They need to have a boob shaped graph with fart sound effects to get rating up for this app.
Successful app development is as much about marketing and PR as it is about the concept and creation. As app developers we wanted to understand our sales volume, gauge the penetration of our marketing strategies and easily follow the success of the app once it leaves the nest. We created PositionApp™ because as developers we wanted and more importantly needed this app. As well as giving you access to the top 300 positions of all charts in all countries, PositonApp’s USP is its 6 months of retrospective app positioning data.
PositionApp™ was created for developers, marketers, journalists and reviewers, but by adding a revolutionary set of app discovery dashboards highlighting the biggest app risers in the top 100 and top 300, the app will be appreciated by just about any app user.
Hope you like @millsustwo
Pretty slick. Out of curiosity: Did Apple not give you any flack about scraping their site (store) ?
Seems like a practice they wouldn’t look too fondly on.
I don’t know what could be more worse than not to add a GPS capability like the ones from garmin on this model, I mean its 2010 already, right? GPS should be a part of our normal lives. …GPS details: http://bit.ly/diy-gps-guide
You can get similar app history (at least for the U.S. app store) at
http://www.appexplorer.com/
if you search for an app and click to the app display page.
Hey richr, you miss the point.
This ‘app’ has all countires, all catergories, all apps ‘top 300′ chart data inside an ‘app’
the ‘website’ you recommend is a just that. A website.
And falls very flat.
Thanks for publicizing this!
TopAppCharts.com does similar too.
Memorizing the number of apps by iPhone is not at all possible but it sounds interesting to know their position in short span simply.As if to understand the market is also a necessity for me being an iphone developer.
MikeB: That’s only for the last 30 days, PositionApp is for the last 6 months!
“Of course, it is a niche application and likely won’t ever be in the top 300 itself (ironic, isn’t it?),”
Category – Utilities
PositionApp™.
The movement is the change in position from the previous day.
Country Position Movement
Sri Lanka 18 new
New Zealand 130 new
USA 133 new
Sweden 153 new
Ireland 156 new
UK 182 new
India 210 new
Australia 244 new
Canada 248 new
Hong Kong 289 new
This seems like a extremly useful app. However, it seems as the service is down at the moment?
Ah, works now!
No German in the logo? :(
PositionApp™ is now in the TOP 100 ALL CHARTS in 7 countries within the first 48 hours!! @millsustwo
Haha, we wrote for the Smoke Signal together.
If you want to have every app’s details on your PC, you can use this software http://www.appstoresdk.com. Worked for me!