Anyone who subscribes to the mailing lists of any app store was bombarded with messages in late December. These messages all featured slightly different approaches to a simple marketing concept: If you don’t want to do last minute shopping for someone on your list, just buy them a smartphone app instead. The marketing efforts continued immediately after the holidays as well, with many apps pitching themselves as ideal for the Christmas through New Year’s celebrations. Well, the numbers are now partially in for holiday app sales, so we can answer the question of whether or not these tactics actually worked.
According to the report on Tech Crunch, reports have been given from third-party developers who release applications across the different mobile OS platforms. Specifically, the ever-popular Flixster has given figures for their post-holiday success.
Flixster, in just the week of the 25th through the 1st, had over a million app installations. The huge majority of these were from Apple, with 51% being on the iPhone and 10.5% being on the iPad. Android came in at a moderately close second, seeing 30.1%. Between Android and Microsoft, the RIM platform appears, seeing a 7.9%. So, where does that put Microsoft’s marketplace? At about .5%.
Of course, .5% of a million isn’t terrible (it’s about 5,000), and considering the current maturity level of the Microsoft marketplace, it’s really not a terrible sign. Still, it’s painful if you’re trying to see Microsoft as a potential competitor against Apple and Android, since for every Microsoft install, the other platforms combined saw about 200.
Of course, none of this can tell us for certain how pre-Christmas sales went or how other companies fared during the pre-New Year’s week, but it does give us a strong indication of where app sales are at. Apple is killing it; Android is feeling fine; and Microsoft… Microsoft just hurts.
