The Apple App Store celebrates its fifth anniversary, and the company has reported that it has over 900,000 apps with an average of around 50,000 downloads per app. A recent research, however, suggests that not every app experience the same amount of popularity, with many so-called “zombie apps” getting close-to-zero downloads.
When we say zombie apps, we do not mean games and utilities that come with hordes of the living dead. Tracking service Adeven defines zombie apps as the ones that never appear in Apple’s masterlist of the most downloaded apps all over the world. This chart covers over 300,000 areas.
The figures also indicate that over two-thirds of iOS apps are barely ever downloaded and installed by consumers. According to the analytics firm’s report, “579,001 apps out of a total of 888.856 apps in our database are zombies.”
Meanwhile, Apple has said that 90 percent of all apps in its App Store are downloaded at least once a month.
With so many apps in the marketplace, which has recently reached the 50 billionth download milestone, many developers struggle to have their zombie apps get noticed.
Adeven’s study comes after the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project published the results of its survey, indicating that 68% of smartphone owners have used five or lesser apps on a weekly basis, while other apps were downloaded on impulse and lost their appeal almost instantly.
Source: BBC
