Mobilewalla: Sunday is the best day to launch an iOS app
updated 01:15 am EST, Tue December 20, 2011
Wednesday, Sunday roughly tied for Android
Mobile applications analytics firm Mobilewalla notes that if an iOS developer's goal is to get their app in the top rankings, it would be best to launch the app on a Sunday -- despite the fact that the most favored day with developers themselves is Wednesday, reports TechCrunch. Sunday was also the best day for launching an Android app, closely matched by Wednesday, but the odds of getting a top ranking were much poorer, the study found.
The worst day for launching an iOS app was, by a significant margin, Friday (it was Thursday, again by a notable margin, for Android apps). The discrepancy may be in part explained by the differences in the two stores' systems: for Android, developers pick their own release day, whereas on the App Store the date is set by Apple following the review process.
More interestingly, the study revealed that iOS apps are almost four times more likely to be discovered via rankings than Android apps, despite the large gap in the number of apps on each store. Although the Android Market is growing at a faster pace than the App Store (during the 17-week period that was studied, 122,220 Android apps were released compared to 91,754 iOS apps), users have more difficulty finding any given app -- less than 10 percent of Android apps, regardless of launch day, appear in the top 240 rankings (a combination of the top rankings in their respective categories). This compared to an average of more than 35 percent of iOS apps.
On the best day for launching apps on both platforms, Sunday, the differences were stark: 42 percent of such apps for iOS reached the top 240, while only 11 percent of Android apps did. As for why Sunday was such a good day for app launches on both platforms, Mobilewalla CEO and founder Dr. Anindya Datta suggested that because relatively few apps launch on the weekends, users have an easier time discovering them.
The company also noted in a separate study that the total app count across all four major mobile platforms was expected to hit the one million mark sometime this month (based on its app count of 987,863 earlier in December, and an average app growth rate of 2,000 per day). The majority of that one million will be iOS apps at around 600,000, followed by Android with around 330,000. [via TechCrunch]
