Brands are increasingly prominent on the App Store and Apple tends to love featuring folks like Britney Spears and Coca-Cola on the App Store’s front page. But who’s actually succeeding and which brands have managed to maintain high download numbers?
PositionApp, the app that lets you track how iPhone apps are doing on the App Store rankings, might have the answer. They track and record the top 300 apps across all demographics and have provided us with details on the top 15 apps in the US App Store. Hit the jump for the list.
The first two apps, Facebook and Pandora, are clear favorites and there’s no real surprise there. But then it gets a bit tricky. Somehow, Driver’s Ed.com and Gibson Learn and Master Guitar are the next two. Though valuable applications (or so it seems), it’s intriguing that folks like Disney and Comcast are managing to take a back seat to lesser known brands.
Of course, there are plenty of high-quality brands on here. Companies like eBay, MySpace, Bank of America and PayPal are all doing quite well, and have managed to sustain their high position for at least 4 weeks.
Ultimately, it’s hard to figure out from this list what exactly makes a branded app successful, though one thing’s for sure: brands have started to consume the iPhone and pretty much everyone has to have an “iPhone” strategy. Success definitely seems indirectly related to providing value, as applications like Facebook / The Weather Channel and Paypal show.
So what do you think? How did these apps become successful as compared to the hundreds of other equally popular brands who created apps that flopped?
Interesting … thanks for sharing!
I’ve actually been using PositionApp, and REALLY liking it!
Thanks again,
Ryan
PayPal App is already there? Woah? , it has just been put there last week, right?
Surprisingly, twitter’s official App isn’t there… Mmkay?
Apple app store really does moves on mysterious ways.
Well… This goes out to all of you ppl in the Bay area:
Twitter is a rather small player in the “real world”. Compared with Facebook, Ebay and Wikipedia, rather few ppl use Twitter.
The problem is that 95% of the people actually tweeting on a regular basis is situated in CA. Therefore you might get the feeling that Twitter is bigger than is really is.
where did u get ur stats? Cuz u are so far off. Facebook is definitely #1, but u cant say “rather few” people use twitter.
horribly written article
” top 15 apps in the US App Store.”
the whole article never states what this list IS. top rated? top downloaded? top bought but never used?
i can imply a million things
Gagan:
That’s a great question you end with but I think you partially answered it yourself (and I’ll make an edit) — success *definitely* depends on the value you provide to your users. Most people won’t care about an app if it’s solely about the brand and the brand’s marketing without proving any real utility.
For folks that are interested in this sort of topic, it’s something that I’ve written about in my forthcoming book from O’Reilly. I’m still looking for early reviewers…more info here –
http://kenyarmosh.com/book/
Very cool, I use this app and highly recommend it, here is more info on it.
http://www.appboy.com/iphone/positionapptm-ustwotm-110257/
These brands were already successful and well-recognised before they wrote their apps. It’s that simple.
Just downloaded this yesterday to track my upcoming app (shameless plug – biggullyapps.com/stealthcam )
Looks like it’s going to be very helpful.
Another app I find myself checking every 20 minutes is AnalyticsPro – it’s the only analytics app I’ve tried but I really love it. It’s like crack to a new developer.
Me too!
I’m #147 in Hungary!
Shouldn’t the two columns in the right be titled, “-2 Week” and “-3 Week”? “This week” is the current week, “Last Week” would be one week ago, or -1, right? Or are they purposefully skipping two weeks ago?
That is kind of cool. We are only getting 3-6 downloads per day, sometimes hundreds per day for upgrades. Didn’t think Carticipate would be in the top 300 in so many countries.
Teletracker in the top 125 navigation apps in Pakistan. Who would have thunk.
Cool app for those who are developers.
Basically, this article isn’t about the top 15 “brands” on the App store at all. It’s about the top 15 apps. Foul!
I don’t understand? but I am stupid? why is this about the top 15 apps? the chart above is not the actual top15 itunes chart? it’s the top15 Brands chart which actualy doesn’t exist in itunes.
well it just goes to show that most of the other things on the App store are more CRapp that APP
These apple stores directories, content aggregators and rating sites present an interesting ethical issue.
Scraping HTML from the Apple site (which they all do to get their data) is against Apple’s terms of conditions. Some would say for good reason. It’s Apple’s proprietary information and it has value, Apple sourced it, managed it and published it. Scraping it from websites is effectively stealing from Apple. Of course, it’s unlikely a company is going to get prosecuted for this, but Apple might block servers from accessing their website, causing these feeder sites to lose availability for a period of time. It’s a business risk that I hope their investors are fully aware of.
On the other side of the argument, is the fact that Apple doesn’t provide any useful information about applications. These feeder services provide an extremely useful source of information to consumers. Without them, it’s simply really hard to find the best applications. I think Apple really needs these services, as they encourage more application downloads.
So is the only reason Apple doesn’t provide such useful information themselves so that they can protect the privacy rights of the developers? If they provide accurate download statistics, you can figure out the revenue of each developer. Also, perhaps allowing users to rate applications on the Apple Store might attract too many negative application comments and “hurt” their brand.
Either way, it’s not an area I would feel comfortable setting up a business around.
Tim, like the essay, See what you are saying. I can assure you apple are more than aware of what we do to get this data, it’s a publicly accessed feed so no issues there. Id also say that we made this app purely to give back to the developer community. We invested in it purely because we care. Hence there is no risk on our side. Just love :)
We can purchase by paypal.Its really good ………
I’m confused. What does it mean to be a branded app? My company’s app is currently 3 ahead of Pandora in the US overall free category (at #28). We’re a brand and the iPhone app is not our primary product, we were even covered in TechCrunch once.
I’m purposefully not mentioning the company name because this isn’t a self-interested plug comment, I’m really trying to understand what the criteria was here.
Awsome…
I use this app on the phone and another one on the desktop. (AppViz) which pulls in data from Applyzer – I often find the the data does not match up. It wouldn’t concern me, except that the difference can occasionally be quite large (30 – 50 ranks)
As a result, I take these with a grain of salt.
The list seems to show that apps are being sought for active usability over passive entertainment, which is sorta heartening.
I’m even surprised to see my favorite game, WaterSlide Extreme on this list. I mean, it’s a great game and all, very interactive and stuff, but to make it to the top 15, that sounds far-fetched. Except if this is the free version they’re talking about, then it should indeed make it to the top 15. :)
I am using Paypal too on my iPhone. The Weather Channel, Facebook, and also the Virtual Zippo Lighter. :)
The correct approach leads to the desired results for choosing the correct approach to extend your portfolio through iPhone app review the article below
http://www.appmanifesto.com/insights/2010/05/3-approaches-for-brands-contracting-iphone-developers/