App Sales, What’s Hot – What’s Not – #2: New & Noteworthy in an iTunes Category

This post continues my analysis of some App Store conditions.

The first post can be found here: App Sales, What’s Hot – What’s Not – #1: Category Featured


#2 – New & Noteworthy in iTunes

When you release a new App you get a chance of getting listed in the New & Noteworthy section on the iTunes within your category.

These aren’t hand picked and so it is very easy to get in there if your first day downloads are high enough. I had two App releases where I could watch what happens if you get into that list.


Looking New & Noteworthy

Here are two screenshots, showing both Apps on top of their categories in iTunes in two different countries:

The Apps are Analytics for iPad (iPad only) and Webshot (Universal).

The duration of the listing is very short and depends very much on how many new releases are published into that category. From what I have seen, you get listed for about 1-2 days.


How to analyse this position

I will compare them with two other releases which were iPad only and Universal – both never listed in this prominent spot.

Because these are new releases, there are no previous sale statistics that could increase. Therefor I will compare the first four weeks of sales after release.
The sales will be compared with sales made in the same country they were listed New & Noteworthy.


Sales numbers – iPad App only

First the one that was New & Noteworthy:

The graph is not exactly four weeks because the App is not that old yet, but the trend is visible.

You can see a spike on the first day and sales going down very fast to a constant level.


And one that wasn’t New & Noteworthy:

No spike in the beginning but a slowly growing number of sales over time.


Sales numbers – Universal App


Again, first the New & Noteworthy one:

Again: You can see a spike on the first day and sales going down very fast. Later they start growing again, very slowly.


And the one which was not:

No spike in the beginning. No growth visible in that country.

On a side note: Most sales for Universal Apps seem to be iPhone based, iPad users still seem to have problems finding Apps.
Originally these Universal Apps were meant for the iPad and made iPhone compatible to reach a bigger audience.


Conclusion

These numbers are very tough to read because the event is so short and the numbers are not that high.

But a trend can be found and looks promising. If you get listed in the New & Noteworthy listing on iTunes you seem to get a good and very visible spot to kick off your new App.

In contrast to not being listed, you will find the sales trends going down instead of up in the following weeks because there is a huge spike in the beginning that you can not repeat without other marketing or promotions.

Thats why this seems to be a worthy spot to claim.

But how can you improve your chances?
I will try to use promo codes. Getting all available promo codes into user hands and get them to purchase my App within the first hours after its release may be worth a try.

Published on 2010/07/03 13:10.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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V8 vs. Spidermonkey

About a year ago I decided to go with v8js to use javascript code within php because it was so much easier to handle.

Today I benchmarked a problem related to the v8 engine and just out of curiosity I ran the same test with Spidermonkey.

A simple A/B Test:

  • A = define a JS Function and call it it in a loop
  • B = define a JS Function once and call it in a loop

The results for V8 were:

Runs 10 100 1.000 10.000 100.000
A 0.0048ms 0.0018ms 0.0159ms 0.4257ms 4.9063ms
B 0.0004ms 0.0011ms 0.0072ms 0.1733ms 1.8506ms

It was not really surprising that the one-time-definition was faster.
I tried exact the same with Spidermonkey:

Runs 10 100 1.000 10.000 100.000
A 0.0016ms 0.0276ms 0.2141ms 1.8415ms 18.483ms
B 0.0011ms 0.0039ms 0.0713ms 0.8591ms 8.4125ms


Huge difference compared to V8!


Here’s the test code:

V8 Test:


<?php
$runList = array(10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000);
$jsFunc = 'function myTestFunc () { return {foo: "bar"}; } ';
foreach ($runList as $runs ) {
$start = mstime();
$js = new V8Js('Test');
for ( $i = $runs; $i > 0; $i-- ) {
$js->executeString($jsFunc, 'Test.Context');
$js->executeString("myTestFunc();", 'Test.Context');
}
echo "#1: " . (mstime() - $start)." ({$runs} with re-definition)<br />";
unset($js);
$start = mstime();
$js = new V8Js('Test');
$js->executeString($jsFunc, 'Test.Context');
for ( $i = $runs; $i > 0; $i-- ) {
$js->executeString("myTestFunc();", 'Test.Context');
}
echo "#2: " . (mstime() - $start)." ({$runs} without re-definition)<br />";
unset($js);
echo "<hr />";
}
function mstime() {
list($usec, $sec) = explode(" ", microtime());
return ((float)$usec + (float)$sec);
}


Spidermonkey Test:


<?php
$runList = array(10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000);
$jsFunc = 'function myTestFunc () { return {foo: "bar"}; } ';
foreach ($runList as $runs ) {
$start = mstime();
$js = new JSContext('Test');
for ( $i = $runs; $i > 0; $i-- ) {
$js->evaluateScript($jsFunc, 'Test.Context');
$js->evaluateScript("myTestFunc();", 'Test.Context');
}
echo "#1: " . (mstime() - $start)." ({$runs} with re-definition)<br />";
unset($js);
$start = mstime();
$js = new JSContext('Test');
$js->evaluateScript($jsFunc, 'Test.Context');
for ( $i = $runs; $i > 0; $i-- ) {
$js->evaluateScript("myTestFunc();", 'Test.Context');
}
echo "#2: " . (mstime() - $start)." ({$runs} without re-definition)<br />";
unset($js);
echo "<hr />";
}
function mstime() {
list($usec, $sec) = explode(" ", microtime());
return ((float)$usec + (float)$sec);
}



Published on 2012/01/27 19:33.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: ,

I just wanted to share the following complaint:

WS only captures the visible part of the web page, the rest is blank.

Please fix this or I’ll have to write a scathingly negative review and give you zero stars.

(Running iOS 5 developer preview.)

Yours, [..]

Remember: iOS 5 is just a Developer preview right now (a few days old) and scheduled to be made public in the next months.

Published on 2011/06/14 19:14.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags:

Time Machine Interval

Time Machine is a great way to backup all files and restore to any point in time, by default it creates a new backup every hour.

Normally this won’t hurt the performance but if you have many small files on your disk or huge portions of your data change very often, it will slow down the whole system.

You can change the intervals to reduce the slowdowns. To backup only every 6 hours, open your terminal and:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 21600

The interval is in seconds.

To setup more sophisticated schedules you can also try a free tool called TimeMachineEditor (http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/).

Published on 2011/01/04 13:09.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: ,

Archived Apps in XCode and where they are

Archived Apps in XCode are a great way to submit new versions to iTunes Connect because they are automatically grouped, tagged and re-signed in the process – you don’t need to manually find the compiled App, zip it & upload with the Application Loader.

If you start at a new Mac without data migration, you can simply copy the folder with all archived App versions to your new users library.

You can find it here:

/Users/<USERNAME>/Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Archived Applications


Or, if you develop at different Macs, symlink that folder to your Dropbox to have them accessible everywhere :-)

Published on 2011/01/04 12:44.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , ,

Analytics for iPad, Release 1.6

Today the 1.6 Update was submitted to Apple. Originally this update have been scheduled for the first week of November but was put on hold to be released with the iOS 4.2 version to have the least possible problems when everyone upgrades their iPad :-)

It contains only a few but very cool new features:


The new features are:

  • Support for Multiple Accounts – often asked for, here it comes!
  • Advanced Segments – take a better look at your reports by switching and comparing subsets of data
  • Open Reports in other Apps like iBooks – any App that supports PDF Files can receive reports for later usage
  • Print your Reports! – Support for AirPrint is now built in


Improved was the following:

  • The general speed of the website listing updates and report downloads was improved
  • Goals have now names instead of numbers


Also one bugfix is included:

  • Some users with special characters in their password had trouble logging in


In addition to the Update of the Free Version including its Premium Upgrade, there was also a full blown premium Version submitted to the store. That version is exactly the same but meant for everyone who has disabled In-App-Purchases and can’t get the premium upgrade.


2010/12/05 – Today the update hit the store, watch out for update notices in iTunes or the App Store to get it on your iPad!

Published on 2010/11/22 00:26.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags:

Detect iPad and iPhone using Javascript

I’ve got some people asking for a simple Javascript-Detection for iPad’s.

It’s simple, just take a look at the browser identification:

Example:


It basically searches in the browser information for any occurence of “iPad” or respectively “iPhone” and returns true if found.

Here’s an example of Safari’s identification on the iPad:


Published on 2010/09/21 19:40.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , , , , ,

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