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How Broken Is App Discovery, And What Are Some Repairs Underway?
An 8-item QnA about the reality of the app discovery ecosystem, lots of telling statistics, and some useful resources moving forward.
3 Min Read
Xiaoxu Ma is founder of the YTTRO: Free Game App Discovery effort.
Q: How is the global mobile app marketplace doing on the whole?
A: Pretty well.
The global mobile app marketplace will reach $25 billion this year (Markets and Markets).
Collectively, by 2017, developers will have made over $77 billion from 268 billion downloads altogether. (Entrepreneur.com).
Q: How many apps are there?
A: A lot.
On the App Store and the Play Store alone, over 3.1 million apps (Statista).
Taking into account all the other app stores, over 4 million (Statista).
Those numbers are growing.
Q: So any independent app has a pretty small chance of making it big?
A: Smaller than you would have thought.
Of the small number of chart-toppers, most belong to titans who cement their positions in the charts with their size and marketing power. (Polygon)
Here's a sample of the kinds of growth they experience. (YTTRO)
Q: Wow. How much do these chart-toppers make?
A: A lot.
The top 3% of developers cash in over 100k a month. (Vision Mobile)
That's more than 20,000% of what the bottom 57% collectively earn. (Vision Mobile)
The top 20% of the app stores rake in 80% of the revenue. (Newzoo).
That means the remaining 80% of the app stores fight over the remaining 20% of revenue.
Q: What?! What does the revenue ratio look like between a top developer and an average indie developer?
A: Not so good.
A top app can earn an astounding 40,000% of what an indie developer earns (GigaOm).
(And produce over 1800% (Fierce Developer) of what the indie developer produces.)
Q: Hold up- what does an independent developer earn? 
A: Well, it varies.
More than half of developers make less than $500/month. (GigaOm)
68% majority of developers make less than $5000 over the entire lifetime of their most successful app. (App-Promo).
The average development cost of an indie mobile app: approximately 6500. (TechCrunch).
How high marketing costs can go: 30,000 (almost 500% of development costs).
Even if you are spending 30,000 on marketing (that's several thousand a month), the titans are spending over 15,000 times more. (VentureBeat)
Assuming you spend the above amounts (nearly 40,000) on developing and marketing your app, the majority of indie developers not only don't reap earnings, but also lose up to 82% of their expenditure.
Q: Wow. Are there any independent developers at all in the top 20% of apps?
A: Yes, but less than half.
If we exclude the top 'titan' earners from the 20% minority, only 8% of independent developers have generated sufficient revenue to run a stand-alone business. (App Promo)
Q: Shouldn't all indie devs just throw in the towel and join titan companies like Glu or Gameloft?
A: Not quite yet. There’s still hope. App discovery may be broken, but the tech ecosystem deserves credit for attempting repairs. Check out a few that are headed in the right direction.
Editor-curated lists from the App Store. (Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/07/why-i-cautiously-support-the-app-store-change/)
Subcategories and image-oriented browsing from Xyo. (Read more: http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/06/will-subcategories-save-the-app-discovery-movement/)
Explore the long-tail, exposed on YTTRO’s giant map of apps. (Read more: https://www.techinasia.com/talk/discover-big-game-top-charts/)
Personalized app search from Chomp. (Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2012/feb/24/apple-buys-startup-chomp)
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