Iphone users have the attention spans of hummingbirds
IPHONE APPLICATIONS depend on novelty value and are hardly used after they have been on a punter's phone for longer than 20 days.
According to a report from Pinch Media just 30 percent of people who buy an Iphone application actually use it the day after they bought it. After 20 days less than five per cent of those who downloaded the application are using it.
If they download a free application they are even less likely to use it, indicating that many Apple users believe that, unless they have paid shedloads for something, it is not worth having.
After seven months, 15,000 applications, and 500 million downloads later App Store activity continues to be huge.
However most punters are either wasting their money, or are not interested in what is available.
Pinch Media CEO Greg Yardley said the fact that iPhone users don't get the chance to try before they buy, means that many of them are saddled with software they don't want. The reason is that they are so cheap that few users think to shop around before they buy it, instead they pay for and download anyway.
Only 10 percent of Iphone applications appear to retain an audience over time, and these are games and entertainment listings. Facebook and social notworking sites are also doing well.
Developers are still making plenty of money from the other 90 percent, Yardly said. But users are generally wasting their cash and good products are not getting proper promotion.
If you don't get on those Top 100 or Staff Favorites lists, your application does badly however good it is. µ
L'Inq
Pinch Media
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"If you don't get on those Top 100 or Staff Favorites lists, your application does badly however good it is."
This isn't surprising. I tried browsing the App Store using iTunes and it was a slow, clunky and unintuitive experience. So much so that browsing the store on my iPod Touch was easier... but even then I could only tolerate skimming through the top 25.
Apple's insistence that the App Store can only be accessed from within iTunes is a fundamental mistake. If they made it accessible from a normal browser I reckon many more people would be inclined to spend some time digging deeper.
I take it you have never tried writing that comment on your iphony. I find it easier and faster to use t9 on any phone (well not motorola razor), than on any iphone. Just typing socks on the console is an exercise of restraint.
This is probably because people are buying stupid novelty apps which aren't very expensive, so they hold little value to the person. Hell, if people aren't using their $20 worth of novelty apps, it's not a huge loss for them anyway.
What a silly story! (Of course, that's what I've come to expect from the Inquirer).
Attention span of hummingbirds? Where did you get that from the facts? Where is the comparison of iPhone users to users of other apps?
The alternative explanation is that iPhone makes it so easy and inexpensive (or even free) to try new things that people are willing to experiment and try things that they never would have on a different phone.