Last few months has seen a flurry of announcements by big telecom service providers opening dedicated application stores for their subscribers. WATBlog had recently covered the opening of the first mobile app store, Airtel App Central in India. This was immediately followed by a series of similar announcements by Reliance Communications and Vodafone.
As Airtel App Central recently completes 4 months, lets have a look at a few numbers describing its journey so far. According to figure released by the company the store offers 71000 apps, a big jump from the initial 1250 it started out with. It initially offered compatibility with 550 phone models but has now expanded to 780 devices. The store has witnessed 13 million downloads in total at the rate of 1.2 downloads/ second over the 4 months. The lowest cost of an application is Rs.5 and more than over 32% of downloads are paid for.
On tracking the purchase of apps in the first month of its operation some interesting data emerged. Tier 2 cities in India made a big contribution to the number of downloads. The top 5 cities downloading apps were Surat, Udaipur, Pune, Mangalore and Thiruvanathapuram. Also among the 25 categories in which the apps are currently classified, the top 5 categories were Social Networking, Lifestyle, Books, Entertainment and Games. Moreover basic phones priced at less than Rs. 5000, carried out the maximum downloads. Even though 25% of the Apps were free to download, the top 5 popular Apps were subscription based.
At the time of launch, Mr. Atul Bindal, President, said,” We want to transform users’ phones into smart devices – with the click of a single button.” In conformance with this objective, the store has many features to achieve this objective. Firstly the apps can be purchased by what they call the ‘Easy Single-Click Purchase Mechanism’ wherein the cost of the app is automatically added to the customer’s mobile bill or deducted from the available talk-time. The store can be visited by users through Airtel Live on their mobile phone and or by SMSing app to 54321 (toll free) to receive the URL. The store also lists all the user’s downloaded applications into a My Purchases section which makes it easier to download them in case the user changes handsets.
Airtel is now working on a downloadable version of App Central so that one won’t need to access it through a web browser but through an icon on the menu. App Central is also aiming to offer local and regional apps for customers across the country.
It is yet too early declare these enterprises a success or failure in India. Although observing the trends in western countries, if the app stores are really able to deliver the quality desired by the consumer, the app stores will emerge as a success story in India as well. What is your opinion?
Nice article. IMO, there’s no question about apps becoming popular in India. 3G rollout should accelerate this trend.
I think it would be fair to say that Airtel’s app store is not the first app store that Airtel’s subscribers would have used. GetJar has been available and is quite popular in India . Wondering if you can guesstimate # of downloads on Airtrl from GetJar vs. airtel’s app store (especially for featurephones).
Yes you are right. GetJar has been quite popular in India since quite a long time but its official entry into the Indian market was marked only by its tie up with Reliance in late April.
Airtel App Central opened in February this year.
These are a few numbers I did come across. GetJar hit 1 billion downloads globally this month averaging 2 million downloads daily across the world. It is experiencing 300% growth year on year.
With respect to India, it is the 4th most visited mobile site in India. In January 2010 India ranked 2nd globally with almost 8.7 million downloads from GetJar that month which is way more than the monthly average downloads from Airtel App Central (13/4). But then again its a brand new service which will take time to catch on.
Hope this information helps.