Third-party apps often eclipse Apple's own on the App Store, study finds

AppleInsider

Apple has highlighted a new report indicating that third-party apps have found App Store success and popularity across the globe, beating out Apple's own apps in most cases.

App Store on an iPhone

The report, conducted by economists at the Analysis Group, focuses on the regional and global success of third-party apps on Apple platforms. Apple says that demonstrates "the breadth of opportunity for developers and the wide range of choice available to consumers around the world."

Since the launch of the App Store, third-party apps have grown from about 500 to more than 1.8 million, Apple says. The iPhone maker itself maintains 60 apps on the App Store.

"Today, more than 99.99 percent of iOS apps are made by third-party developers, fueling a growing and competitive marketplace that contributes to a dynamic experience for users to the benefit of Apple and third-party developers alike," Apple wrote.

Per the report, third-party apps are the only options available in several types of categories. In most other categories, the report points out that Apple apps are far from the most-used or most popular.

"Across many app types, Apple's own apps account for a relatively small share of app usage among iPhone users," Apple writes. "This is the case even though some Apple apps are preinstalled to enable core functionality of the device."

For example, the most popular communication apps in the U.S. are Snapchat and Facebook Messenger. Spotify and Pandora are first and second in music streaming, while Google Maps and Waze are the most popular navigation apps in the country.

Additionally, the report points out that users often switch between multiple apps in a single category -- such as using different messaging apps to communicate with their friends, family, and colleagues. Apple says this underscores how easy switching between apps is, and the "breadth of opportunity for developers."

Apple says that it gives developers a variety of tools to aid them in creating useful or innovative apps.

The report is an obvious counterpoint to increasing criticism of Apple's market power. In the U.S., Europe, and other regions, lawmakers and regulators are cracking down on alleged antitrust violations by tech giants.

Some of the accusations include self-preferencing, or tech giants using their market power to bolster their own first-party apps on platforms that they own or maintain. U.S. lawmakers are considering a bill that could end the practice in the country, while similar legislation is underway in the European Union.

This is not the first time that Apple has highlighted a third-party report from the Analysis Group. In the past, Apple has used reports from the organization to defend its App Store commission rate and tout the economic benefits of the App Store.

Read on AppleInsider

chasm

I’m a bit dumbfounded that anyone who has access to Apple Maps (or Google Maps, for that matter) would still be using Waze. It was a very good app once, but having had to recently use it I can see that Google has really neglected it in favour of its own Maps app. The voice is so robotic, and doesn’t tell you to turn unless you are either a) half a mile away or b) right on top of the turn, necessitating a swerve.

Depending on where you live, Google Maps understandably has an advantage on Apple Maps (having had quite a number of years head start, and continuing to develop it), although I’m not personally fond of the default voice on Google Maps either. But what I’m really not fond of in Google Maps is being tracked everywhere I go, which Apple Maps doesn’t do (it stores frequent/favourite routes on-device, and does collect some aggravate stat and hazard-reporting data that it does send to Apple for collective analysis purposes, but I’m not being cyber-stalked by it the way I am with Google and Waze).

Equally bewildering is why more people don’t use Pages. It’s great, and it’s easy to save files in MS Word format if desired (albeit an extra step). Free compared to $79 a year, better (in my opinion) on getting useful documents created, and able to create PDF versions (and e-books you can now take directly to market if desired) with no extra costs involved compared to our Windows friends? This seems like a no-brainer to me, and don’t even get me started on how much more I enjoy creating presentations in Keynote compared to PowerPain — sorry, PowerPoint.

A lot of the reason why some third-party apps do so well compared to Apple’s own apps is that people are moving to Mac and/or iOS from Windows and Android, and are used to things like Office and other third-party or Google/MS produced software, and that’s fine. There’s a lot of great Apple software from third-party developers as well, which makes for a healthy market.

I think rules against self-preferencing by big tech companies that run stores like MS, Apple, and Google makes sense, but let’s not pretend that the iOS market suffers the same problem as the Android market, where people are often coerced/afraid to run anything not by Google, or pressured to run as much MS-produced software as possible by Microsoft. Of these three tech giants, Apple’s is by far the least self-preferencing and most robust/diverse market out there, and the least in need of heavy regulation.

And let’s not for even a second pretend that forcing “side-loading” will “fix” anything on Apple’s side of the fence. Android already allows side-loading, and the problems and security compromises that result from that are routine and countless. This report proves that although iOS is a single market source for apps, it’s robust and healthy on the consumer side (Apple could do more on the developer side, certainly — but none of the considered legislation even remotely addresses that, for either Google or Apple).

jony0

I agree that Pages is great, easier to use for most simpler documents than Word. Same with Numbers, easier to do quick stuff that looks nicer as well because of the freedom of multiple tables on a sheet, brilliant. Both also play nice with iOS for the most part. However it does take a bit of time adjusting to rewire lifelong muscle memory habits from Word and Excel, Pages still lacks Find & Replace of special characters and both could use macros among other things.

godofbiscuits

If only Apple hadn’t funded the report.

22july2013

jony0 said:

Pages still lacks Find & Replace of special characters and both could use macros among other things.

Pages allows me to use the Find & Replace window to replace either emojis or special characters like Tab using "\t" escape sequences. If you are trying to edit other special characters like the low end of the ASCII table, then perhaps your document is a text document rather than a Pages document and in that case the macOS "tr" command is your best friend, like it is mine.

But you are right about missing macros. So many years ago I purchased Keyboard Maestro to be able to write macros for all of Apple's apps. So for example, if I need to combine/merge all lines in Pages that end in a dash, and remove the dash, (which is just a random example that comes to my mind right now) I can write a macro in KM that selects the current line, copies it to a clipboard, checks if the clipboard ends in a dash, and then performs the necessary keystrokes depending on the result. I can even put that in a loop. And my loop could end when the selection is blank for, say, 5 times in a row, which probably means end of file. So I just took the challenge to write this macro (it detects the end of the loop differently from how I imagined, above) and I'm pasting the code here for your viewing pleasure.


Keyboard Maestro is a really great way to write macros for Pages. The app is so powerful and sophisticated I would probably still use it even if Apple introduced its own macro language for its own apps.

crowley

AppleInsider said:

Apple has highlighted a new report indicating that third-party apps have found App Store success and popularity across the globe, beating out Apple's own apps in most cases.

"most" cases?  Seems unlikely.

radarthekat

crowley said:

AppleInsider said:

Apple has highlighted a new report indicating that third-party apps have found App Store success and popularity across the globe, beating out Apple's own apps in most cases.

"most" cases?  Seems unlikely.

There’s 60 Apple apps.  You could manually scan the list and compare to competing apps.  I think Notes  over EverNote might be a case where Apple wins, but maybe not.  Maps?  Google wins, hands down IMO.  Mail versus GMail?  GMail wins.  Pretty sure Books loses to Kindle.  Pages loses to Word, KeyNote loses to PowerPoint.  This is in terms of total users on IOS devices, not judging which is actually a better app.  So far, in most cases, I’m thinking a 3rd-party app is winning.  Love to see someone run the whole list of 60 apps. 

Spitbath

godofbiscuits said:

If only Apple hadn’t funded the report.

Where does it say that Apple funded the report?

normm

jony0 said:

Pages still lacks Find & Replace of special characters

Not true.  You can use menu commands for find and replace special characters from a selection, or directly enter escape codes such as \n \t \i etc.

mattinoz

Shouldn't that be the case, I mean that is the point of the app store. If 3rd parties can't exceed the core function and target users with higher demands what are they really offering. 

Even if they just target niche function and only enough core function to support that niche they have for some exceeded Apple's offer. 

Stabitha_Christie

crowley said:

AppleInsider said:

Apple has highlighted a new report indicating that third-party apps have found App Store success and popularity across the globe, beating out Apple's own apps in most cases.

"most" cases?  Seems unlikely.

Did you look at the report?

Stabitha_Christie

radarthekat said:

crowley said:

AppleInsider said:

Apple has highlighted a new report indicating that third-party apps have found App Store success and popularity across the globe, beating out Apple's own apps in most cases.

"most" cases?  Seems unlikely.

There’s 60 Apple apps.  You could manually scan the list and compare to competing apps.  I think Notes  over EverNote might be a case where Apple wins, but maybe not.  Maps?  Google wins, hands down IMO.  Mail versus GMail?  GMail wins.  Pretty sure Books loses to Kindle.  Pages loses to Word, KeyNote loses to PowerPoint.  This is in terms of total users on IOS devices, not judging which is actually a better app.  So far, in most cases, I’m thinking a 3rd-party app is winning.  Love to see someone run the whole list of 60 apps. 

You, like the person you are responding to, should read the report. Most of the apps Apple makes weren’t in it as it was limited to handful of categories that were particularly broad. For example “Communication” was one of them and the repetition shows that in some locations.Instagram is more popular for communication than Messages and the Phone app. Does anyone really think Instagram and the Phone app are analogous and competing? 

Stabitha_Christie

Spitbath said:

godofbiscuits said:

If only Apple hadn’t funded the report.

Where does it say that Apple funded the report?

The report says it, it’s on the first page. 

That said, the implication that someone funding research means that the research is biased is bunk. It is fairly common practice and Isn’t a problem in itself. Simone being paid to do research can very much do so without bias and the ethical approach is to disclose any potential conflict of interest.  

The reports lays out the methodology and cites its data sources. Anyone that wants to critique the approach or verity the findings can easily do so. Attacking the report based on funding is pretty weak approach. 

beowulfschmidt

chasm said:

I’m a bit dumbfounded that anyone who has access to Apple Maps (or Google Maps, for that matter) would still be using Waze. It was a very good app once, but having had to recently use it I can see that Google has really neglected it in favour of its own Maps app. The voice is so robotic, and doesn’t tell you to turn unless you are either a) half a mile away or b) right on top of the turn, necessitating a swerve.

The advantage of Waze, at least in my area, is that it's much better are rerouting me around problems than either Google Maps or Apple Maps.  That makes it better for driving around the city, for me.  And I have to say, I don't seem to have the same problem you do with last minute turn directions.  For me, Waze seems to adjust the lead time for turning based on the speed at which I'm driving.  On the freeway, it does it a half mile ahead, though I've gotten them earlier as well.  Along with the lane indicators that have recently been added, I've had more than enough time to make turns.  On surface streets, the lead time for turns seems to be much shortened.

Apple Maps is much faster at recovering from a missed turn than Waze, though the aforementioned lane diagrams have done much to eliminate the need for a quick recovery.

Google Maps is still better for long distance trips with multiple way points though.  I don't know what the limit is, but I've had up to about 8-10 set at once.

If Apple Maps were to improve rerouting around problems, and add way points, I'd never look back.

foregoneconclusion

The Photos app would be a 1st party example of something that is useful but also not really a leader in that particular category.