What do you need to be really popular on Apple's App store and to get into the overall "top free 25," list?The answer is in the US, you need to have at least 38,400 free daily downloads, or 3,530 paid downloads, according to some ball park** figures released by app analysts Distimo.
Mobile phone app analytics business, Distimo has revealed some interesting stats on what you need for success on the top 25 app lists in the US. As you would expect the number of downloads required to get onto the free top 25 is considerably more than the paid list, on average free apps need 13 times as many downloads to get into the free top 25.
Although this changes across categories. The games app category is the most popular and will require many more apps to be downloaded than say the medical category.
For example to hit the top 25 most popular free application in the Entertainment category, an application would need to have 6700 daily downloads, while an equal position in the weather category only requires 300 downloads. Where as, a paid app would need to have 350 downloads to get into the top 25 compared to 40 in the weather category.
There are also some other interesting features about the top twenty fives when you compare free to paid, while the top two categories are the same on paid and free, the lists diverge from three onwards. Social Networking apps are the third hardest category to get into on free apps, but are only seventh hardest in paid apps. Where as a free music app is the fifth hardest category to get into the top 25, in the paid apps it's the twelfth hardest category.
To get into the top five categories for free you need a minimum of;
- Games – 25,300 Daily downloads
- Entertainment – 6,700
- Social Networking – 5,800
- Lifestyle – 3,900
- Music – 3,900
To get in to the top five categories for paid the top five are
- Games – 22,800
- Entertainment – 350
- Photography – 270
- Utilities – 210
- Healthcare and fitness – 170
**Only Apple knows the real figures for getting in the top 25. Distimo's figures are based on a selection of apps and statistics.Additionally these are the figures to get into the top 25, to get to the top, of the top 25, you will need substantially more downloads.
