It's suspicious that it's a graph of cumulative downloads. Cumulative graphs always go up nicely. But what matters is downloads per month. Someone with good monthly numbers will rarely resort to showing cumulative ones.
It's particularly suspicious the way the number for December, which we're only 6 days into, lines up exactly where it would if they were seeing hyperlinear growth. You'd have to time your post almost to the day to make it look so neat.
I would be very interested to see an ordinary graph (i.e. without graphic tricks to make it steep) of downloads per month. That would show us what's really happening.
I wouldn't be surprised if what that graph showed was linear growth (which is bad, because it means a decreasing growth rate), followed by a massive spike in December due to a special promotion.
with a growth rate of one billion app downloads per month
Maybe I read the graph wrong. But there are only 11 spikes for 2011. So they probably haven't reported December downloads.
"This past weekend, thanks to Android users around the world, Android Market exceeded 10 billion app downloads - with a growth rate of one billion app downloads per month"
I think it's pretty obvious that the graph is cumulative. They do mention the rate is accelerating, and a cursory glance at the graph tells that the delta between months appears to be increasing as well. I agree, though, that complementing it with a non-cumulative, per-month graph would be informative and interesting.
Isn't linear growth associated with constant growth rate? Serious question, I'm not sure if I'm not missing some understanding here.
A lot could be learned from making such an organization of the world's data (cough) public.
Given Google's business model, that seems like a pretty good reason not to make the raw numbers public.
I wonder if they are compensating these partners beyond the 10 cent price?
If the difference between 10 cents and 99 cents is pretty trivial psychologically, why would this stunt persuade anyone to put in their credit card number if they haven't done so for 99 cent apps?
The fact that Apple forces iTunes sign-up before you can use the iPhone gives paid iPhone apps a huge advantage over Android Market apps.
Damn... I'm being manipulated and actually liking it :-).
I often lament that Google won't let me temporarily drop my Radar Livepaper app to $0, but perhaps I'd be shooting myself in the foot by doing so.
P.S. I have not been invited into this special $0.10 club. I'm guessing because my apps don't scale well for tablets at the moment.
Lowering my price in the Android Market has done nothing for me personally. Running a sale may increase the download rate, but it seems to even out or lose me money in the end. It doesn't increase enough to convince me to leave my apps at a lower price.
HOWEVER, I feel that if I had the opportunity to go all the way down to, say, $0.25, I would get tons of sales.
I probably won't run a sale again. The bottom line is that I make more money when my apps are priced higher even though I sell less copies. So, being that I'm in this as a business, and not a hobby, I have to stick with higher prices.
I suspect the main effect in the long term will be to boost the app's ranking in its category (because of how many downloads it got) and in search results (based on downloads, active users, ratings, or whatever algorithms Google actually uses). Whether the app will manage to take advantage of that and hang in there, or will fade back to obscurity, will probably vary from app to app.
[1] https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/07Apples-App-Store-...
http://www.knowyourmobile.com/smartphones/smartphoneapps/New...
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/05/android-malware-over-ios-...
