Apple iPhone School » Stats

2009 iPhone Recap

Douglas — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:00:08 +0000

2009 was a great year for the iPhone. I’ve put together some news, apps and hacks from 2009.

Verizon vs. AT&T

Starting with a commercial that attacked AT&T’s 3G coverage, Verizon released a series of commercials that compared the two networks and eventually the DROID vs. the iPhone. AT&T sued Verizon claiming the maps of AT&T’s network only showed 3G coverage which confused customers into thinking there was no coverage in blank areas of the map. AT&T eventually lost the lawsuit and then started in with their own commercials.
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blacksn0w & blackra1n – jailbreak & unlock from Geohot

Geohot did it again, creating an jailbreak and unlock for the iPhone 3GS. Of course the cat and mouse game will continue in 2010 but with the addition of hardware encryption on the iPhone 3GS and Apple’s authorization process of each firmware before you can restore your iPhone, jailbreaking has become more difficult to develop.
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Facebook iPhone App Developer Quits

The developer for the Facebook iPhone app announced he would no longer work on the iPhone app after getting fed up with Apple’s App Store process. Others at Facebook are still working on the app but this was a big PR blow to Apple’s app approval process.
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Google Android

Google has had the Android software out for a while but this year many more phones were released with the software including the DROID from Verizon. Even more phones are scheduled to be released in 2010, some with 1GHz prosessors, OLED screens and other features missing from the iPhone. The official “Google Phone” is also expected to be released in the first quarter of 2010.
(Read More)

Other Major Headlines from 2009:

RipDev Says Goodbye to the iPhone Community
Steve Jobs Illness
FCC Investigates Apple’s Rejection of Google Voice Application
New iPhone 3GS

Anticipated Applications

There were many apps that have been a long time coming. Here are some of the app released in 2009:

Ustream Live Broadcaster
IMDb
Flickr
Skype
TomTom
Starbucks
Rock Band
The Sims 3
SlingPlayer Mobile
Kindle

Apple iPhone School

Here are some statistics for appleiphoneschool.com from 2009:

Visits: 5,911,339
Unique Visitors: 3,059,376
Pageviews: 12,328,153
Countries: 224
Top Ten Countries: United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, France, Australia, Japan, Netherlands, Italy & Brazil

We also introduced a new feature of the website, Quick Tips.

Analytics – Google Analytics App

Douglas — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:54:34 +0000

Available In: App Store

Price: $5.99

With the new site design we’ve been tracking site statistics which got me wondering if there were any good Google Analytics apps. I’m pretty sure I’ve check before but when looking this time I found an app called “Analytics”. The screenshot previews looked good but the price was a little high at $5.99. At the time, it had 12 reviews with 4 out of 5 stars. After reading the reviews, only the first version had bad reviews. After an update to version 1.2 most reviews were 5 out of 5. Another selling point was the developer offers a refund via paypal if you’re not satisfied.

There are tons of features and I’m not going to break down every one. The biggest features are the ability to see all of your sites, ability to change date ranges, and great interface. The loading time is a bit slow on EDGE (5-15 seconds depending on info requested) but is normal on 3G or Wifi. There are also nice graphs and not just a list of numbers. Really, screenshots are what will show off this app so here’s a bunch

Note: Their loading graphic looks like the SWOD (Spinning Wheel of Death) but it’s all good, no worries!

Stats from iPhone Firmware 3.0 Preview Announcement

Douglas — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:35:05 +0000

Apple usually starts off their announcements with stats about sales, downloads, etc. Today there was a lot of info and here’s the recap:

The iPhone is now sold in 80 countries.
The iPhone Sales goal in 2008 was 10 million, they sold 13.7 million.
17 million iPhones have been sold since launch.
30 million total devices (iPhones & iPod Touch) have been sold.
There have been over 800,000 downloads of the free SDK (Software Developer Kit)
There are over 50,000 paid iPhone developers.
60% had never developed for Apple products before.
There are over 25,000 apps in the App Store.
96% of apps submitted have been approved & 98% of those were done in 7 days or less,
There have been over 800 million apps downloaded.

With all of that, keep in mind the App Store was launched less than a year ago… Congrats to all iPhone developers!

The Life of an App Store App

Brooke — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:13:44 +0000

Doug sent me this article a few days ago and I thought it was very interesting. However, I forgot to pass it along! Some of you may have already read about this but, for those of you who haven’t…here you go.

Pinch Media has been keeping some nice records of App Store app statistics. What I found to be interesting were the results of the stats. It seems that people quickly lose interest in the apps they download from the App Store. In fact, according to Pinch Media, “For free applications, only about 20 percent of users return to use the app the first day after they download it, and then it quickly drops off from there. By 30 days out, less than 5 percent are using the app. The chart for paid apps shows a slightly steeper fall-off rate.”

Not only did I find this to be interesting but, based on my own experience, highly accurate. There are very few applications that I use on a daily basis and to be honest, there are many I completely forget about after using them the first time (or demoing them).

When I do find that I have a few minutes to spare (usually when waiting at the doctor’s office or when meeting someone) there are a select few games/apps that I choose to occupy my time with. I have pages (and pages) of applications on my iPhone but honestly, I could probably only name about one page worth of those applications. I do realize that I might be a slightly abnormal case since I am constantly testing apps but, I have a feeling this is a universal experience.

What I cannot figure out is if I get bored with applications, if I am partial to certain types of apps or if I just plain forget about apps that I have on my iPhone. Just the other night, Doug and I were watching a movie and I liked one of the background songs so, what does Doug do, he whips out his iPhone and opens Shazam! I had totally forgotten about Shazam and the fact that it is a super cool application! So, I’m still pondering this one and trying to decide if App Store apps are just not developed well enough to hold my attention or if my iPhone is just as saturated with apps as the App Store that I cannot even remember that some exist (even at times when they would be very useful)! You will have to let me know what you think in the comments!

Pinch Media’s results go on to talk about the effectiveness of putting ads in a free application (which turns out to be completely ineffective). You will want to check out TechCrunch’s full article…it has a lot of interesting information. Also take a look at the the Pinch Media presentation at the end of the article (it is an embedded presentation)…there is a ton of great information and stats in there!…especially if you are are app developer or looking into getting started in the app developing world.

Woopra Web App

Douglas — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:03:56 +0000

Available In: Safari

Price: Free

Woopra is a website analytics service like Google’s Analytics but it’s live. You can check out woopra.com for more about the service and desktop app but we’re gonna talk about the port to a web app for the iPhone. You basically download the files from here, edit the config file, upload them to your server, and you’re set! I’ve included detailed instructions below from Woopra’s blog and some screenshots.

1. Download and unzip the Woopra 4 iPhone installation files.
2. Open the Config.php file and edit these three lines to replace your site’s URL, Site ID and API key (found in your Member’s area, note: Site ID is no longer available so I got mine from my embeded script already on my website):
define(‘woopra_host’,'www.YOURSITE.COM’);
define(‘woopra_api_key’, ‘XXXXXXXXX’);
define(‘woopra_site_key’, ‘XXXXXXXXX’);
3. FTP the entire Woopra 4 iPhone directory to a secure location on your server. You can shorten the name of the directory if you want, and even put it in your root, but keep in mind it will not be secure unless you password protect it.
4. Visit the directory you just uploaded in your iPhone!