Growing anticipation for the new iPhone 5 is being blamed for a reported 40% drop in organic iPhone app downloads in August.
According to the Fiksu Index, a benchmarking index for mobile app marketers, the hotly anticipated next generation iPhone is also responsible for a 28.3% increase in mobile app marketing costs.
Fiksu’s CEO, Micah Adler, believes the hype around the next iPhone is likely the cause of the decline in downloads and increase in marketing costs:
“Our data shows that fewer apps were downloaded and subsequently used in August, suggesting that existing iPhone users are sitting tight and waiting for the new device. This caused the overall volume of downloads to decline and disproportionately impacted app marketing costs.” Adler said.
Fiksu have been tracking movements in mobile app marketing for the past six months. The data for the indexes was sourced from 3.7 billion mobile app actions, including app launches, registrations and in-app purchases – recorded by apps marketed via the Fiksu for Mobile Apps user acquisition platform.
The recent trend towards HTML5 based web applications instead of downloads from app stores may give another clue as to the decline in downloads. HTML5 based web apps allow publishers and other content producers a way to bypass restrictive subscription controls enforced by the likes of Apple. Jeroen Matser, VP Strategy at Blast Radius said:
“It’s not due to the iPhone 5. It comes down to an overkill of apps and people not wanting them on their phones. It is asking too much for consumers to download an app. The advent of HTML5 is the way forward, apps are dying. I read an article recently where the analogy was drawn of apps being Yahoo! And HTML5, google, they have invented a new way of doing things.”
