How Many Downloads Does an App Need to Reach The Top of The Free Charts on iOS?
It’s a question we often get from developers: how many downloads does it take to make it to the top?
App tracking company Distimo has revealed data for top apps on a country-by-country basis for the biggest markets. According to the analytics company, the number that top-ranked apps get per day varies widely in different countries.
- United States – Top 10: 80,000; Top 25: 45,000; Top 50: 25,000
- China — Top 10: 30,000; Top 25: 15,000; Top 50: 10,000
- Canada – Top 10: 9,000; Top 25: 4,000; Top 50: 2,000
- Japan – Top 10: 20,000; Top 25: 9,000; Top 50: 6,000
- South Korea – Top 10: 20,000; Top 25: 9,000; Top 50: 5,000
- United Kingdom – Top 10: 18,000; Top 25: 8,000; Top 50: 5,000
- Germany – Top 10: 12,000; Top 25: 5,000; Top 50: 3,000
- France – Top 10: 10,000; Top 25: 5,000; Top 50: 3,000
- Italy – Top 10: 8,000; Top 25: 4,000; Top 50: 2,000
- Australia – Top 10: 8,000; Top 25: 4,000; Top 50: 2,000
The 10 biggest countries in terms of download volume for free apps were: the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea, the U.K., Germany, France, Canada, Italy and Australia, with the U.S. accounting for the highest volume of free app downloads. These numbers are in line with previous reports that have pegged the U.S. and China as the biggest markets for Apple’s App Store, especially with Apple’s new chief executive Tim Cook saying China is now number 2 behind the U.S. in terms of raw revenue.
By comparison, according to new numbers from Google, the countries that downloaded the most Android apps per capita were South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US, Singapore, Sweden, Israel, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway. (Keep in mind that this is a very different statistic though. This is apps per capita, not raw total app installs.)
While the the Android marketplace and Apple’s App Store may have different user bases, both Distimo and Google show that the busiest time for app downloads is the weekend. On iOS, Saturday and Sunday account for a third of the week’s total app store downloads, making the weekend the best time to market products. But that also means it’s also the hardest time to break into the charts, as an app will require more downloads at that time to rank. The most popular time for users to download Android apps is Sunday at 9:00 pm.
Thanks for featuring our blogpost (http://www.distimo.com/blog/2011_12_quora-answering-series-download-volume-needed-to-hit-the-top-charts/) on your website! Unfortunately, as we understood from various people, it was not very clear. Normally we only refer to brackets instead of individual ranks. In this case the figures were the aggregated volume of five applications (e.g. ranks 6- 10). We did not state this in the blogpost, which caused the confusion. We now updated the figures (divided all by 5).
Could you please update your article accordingly? We are sorry for the confusion. If you have any questions, please let me know.
it looks more like the volume of downloads you get ONCE you are in the ranking vs the number of downloads required to actually get to the rankings. this is different because the algorithm require some sort of download acceleration which is inferior to the number of total downloads you get once in the ranking spot (where you get an extra boost naturally)
It would be helpful to make the difference between both. For example in our case our app required much less than 25k downloads to get in the top 25
Must be nice to talk about 10,000s per day. Most of us are lucky to see 100′s. The problem is today there are so many apps released every day that making the top 100 is mostly limited to large publishers and the occasionally lucky break. People simply won’t ever see your app unless you get reviews on popular sites and those are mostly reserved for people with large marketing budgets. Of course if you do somehow make it into a top list somewhere you tend to stay there which makes it doubly tough for any future apps.
Agreed. Thanks for your point, Ouriel. We’ll reword the story a little bit to make that clear. To be fair though, the number of downloads to reach a certain rank varies widely depending on the day of the week and if you’re coming out at an especially sensitive time like the end of the quarter when there are lots of game launches or right after a new iOS device launch.
“Markets like Italy and Australia are easier to crack”. I’d think this is not true. 2,000 downloads are harder to achieve with smaller populations (22 million in Australia, 60 million in Italy).
And what about paid apps?
Thank you for great article.
Hi Ladik, I’m the editor of the site. The rule of thumb I’ve consistently heard is that paid apps generally get about one-tenth the numer of downloads that free apps do.
Pingback: Empresa calcula downloads necessários para emplacar na App Store | Hospedagem de sites Auranet – Juazeiro do Norte – Ceará
Pingback: Just How Many Times Are Top-Of-The-Charts iOS Apps Downloaded? | MacGazette.net - Apple News
Pingback: It Takes 30,000 Downloads A DAY Just To Crack The iOS App Store’s Top 10 | Gizmodo Australia
Can someone tell me the relation between number of ratings and number of downloads ?
It’s a mildly positive relationship. There’s a lot of noise, however, as developers can bump their volume of ratings up by prompting users to review their app.
Pingback: 12.000 tägliche Downloads im Schnitt benötigt, um in Top 10 kostenfreier Apps des deutschen AppStores zu kommen
Pingback: 单日下载量达到多少才能让一个免费的iOS应用进入App Store排行榜？ | 36氪
Thanks for your reply. But what would be the ratio of downloads vs number of ratings ? Any rough estimate based on your experience.
Pingback: Android vs iOS: Which is the Superior Platform For Apps? | Obama Pacman
Pingback: Round up of 25 social media stories that you have to read this week
Pingback: 日本のApp Storeでランキング10位以内に入るには2万ダウンロードが必要！ | gori.me
Pingback: Vigie Web: Trouvailles du week-end… | Orangekaki.
Pingback: Vigie Web: Trouvailles du week-end… | Orangekaki.
Pingback: Episode 14: How Many Birds can be Angry? | Simply Apple
Pingback: AppStore冲榜需要多少下载量？ – dApps
Pingback: Glu Mobile’s smartphone revenues more than triple to $10.1M in the fourth quarter