Apple fact check: 50,000 iPhone apps? – Update 2
I was surprised Monday when Apple (AAPL) vice president Phil Schiller announced that there were 50,000 applications available on the iPhone App Store.
He was giving the keynote at the World Wide Developers Conference — a role usually played by Steve Jobs — and he used the statistic to show how far ahead of its competitors the iPhone had drawn.
In the bar graph displayed on the Moscone Center's oversize screens, the iPhone's 50,000 apps towered over the
- 4,900 Google (GOOG) Android apps,
- 1,088 Nokia (NOK) Ovi Store apps,
- 1,030 Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry apps, and
- 18 apps for "somebody else, I can't read it …Â it's small," Schiller joked, referring to Palm's (PALM) App Catalog.
I was surprised, because I had been waiting for the App Store to hit the 50,000 mark — getting ready to write a post when it reached that milestone. I'd been watching Jeff Scott's automated count at 148Apps.biz — a source that has proved time and again to be considerably more reliable than Apple in these matters.
You see, Scott has a program that scans the App Store every day, counting the apps that are available for download and checking that number against previous counts. He can tell you — for any day since the store opened — how many applications have been approved and how many are still active. He will even send you, on request, a list of the several thousand apps that were approved but are no longer active — including such best-forgotten gems as I Am Rich and Baby Shaker.
I had checked Scott's site on Sunday, the day before the keynote, and I remember that the number of active applications was still stuck somewhere above 47,000.
Could nearly 3,000 apps have been approved overnight?
"These numbers are from this weekend," Schiller claimed at the keynote. "We looked up on the store."
Well, we looked the numbers up on Wednesday morning, two days later, and this is what we found:
Forty eight hours after Schiller made his claim, the number of active applications was still 1,657 shy of that nice round 50,000 mark.
There's no question Apple's App Store has a huge lead over its competitors. And Schiller is perfectly within his rights to ridicule their puny offerings.
But when you have that kind of lead — when you are a giant among pygmies — claiming that you are bigger than you are doesn't show a lot of class.
UPDATE: Reached between sessions at the WWDC, Jeff Scott suggests that Schiller may have included apps available in the roughly 60 overseas App Stores. But that raises other questions.
"One of the problems with the other app stores," he writes, "is that there may be the same app [that's] available here in the U.S. with a different ID due to localization. I'm leaning toward counting these as different apps, but it would be nice to be able to count them as one.
"I have a couple theories about why they announced 50,000 apps. They could be counting all unique apps worldwide across all stores. But my guess is that this would be more than 50,000.
"My main theory is that they just wanted to quote a big number and used that. After all we are likely only a couple weeks away from 50,000 anyway."
UPDATE 2: Sharp-eyed reader Alex Kynikos from Chicago notes that Apple's U.S. store — the one whose numbers they usual report — past 50,000 available apps on Tuesday, nine days after Schiller made his claim at WWDC.
See also:
Philip…they were just doing what auto dealers do. Puffery. But look, they have done it phil. they actually hit 50K
Total Active Apps: 50,176
Total Inactive Apps: 3,738
Total Apps Seen: 53,914
Unique App Publishers: 13,724
last updated: 2009-06-16 02:55:07 -0700 PDT
ex ped: Thanks for the update!
50,000 or 1 most of the apps on iTunes suck and have little or no value. So I wouldn't boast too much. Besides the apps provided with the iPhone do 90% of what you need anyway.
One does not have to be an Apple fiend to see that Philip Elmer-DeWitt is a pinhead, wasting our and his time on a meaningless rant.
ex ped: I believe most microcephalics would find that offensive, Patrick.
Who cares how many apps? 99% of them are totally useless time wasting nonsense. How many apps does the average hard working person use in a year: 5? 10? 20?
Just like everything else about Apple their stuff is toys for children to play with.
Come on everyone, give this guy a break, he is on a big story… A lot of "tech journalists" has to increase his ratings by finding negative about this fruit company.
Anyway, I just read another story that went like this "Apple did not announce a single thing that another carrier or handset maker hasn't done before". Are these "tech journalists" for real? I have not seen apps like the one Airstrip Technologies showed anywhere else. I think that is cool and innovative no meter what these monkey "tech journalists" say.
Peace!
Wow, Mr. Elmer-DeTwitt.
You really need to understand the difference between a US-centric marketplace and a global marketplace. Apple was only quoting international features in the keynote, so it should not have been a surprise that they quoted international app store numbers. If you go directly to 148apps, they make it very clear that they are only calculating the US store. Get your facts together next time.
Your assessment that some of the apps are international versions is a no brainer. How'd you come up with that one? As are apps that only run in the UK (like BBC World News), or all of the Japanese only Manga apps. There are literally thousands of these apps. Not just the duplicate apps you discussed.
I know for a fact that Apple was above 50k on Monday. You're just pissed off that you didn't break the obvious story. And yes, it was obvious. Anybody can count.
I remember one of my journalism students writing an article on a local company in South Carolina that announced in a meeting for investors that it had 19 million dollars in sales for the last quarter. The true number, when one read into the number, as the precision journalism class was teaching, and as our State newspaper reporter was presenting to my class, was USD$ 18,880,005 dollars in sales. This same discussion arose, and the reporter in my class said, "precision does not remove the possibility of accepting numbers that are rounded, massaged, or even tweeked, as long as the spirit of the numbers tell the story to be told." (Direct quote from my notes I now use when teaching precision journalism)
In other words, a major corporation does business on such huge scales, that if Microsoft announced 10 million Vista sales, and it is 9,900,000, the gist of the story remains the same.
Now, this is a blog, where the story is often in the non-story, but it is generally a better written blog so there is no reason for this to really be a subject up for discussion. A student of language would note that the claim made, in the venue it was made, was that Apple sold a whole bunch of apps and beats the stuffing out of the next stores down the list.
I would note that when Microsoft uses installed user base to predict game sales on Windows and Xbox compared to its gaming platform competitors, despite a significant portion of that installed user base being corporate machines that will never have a game purchased for them, few journalists even note the discrepancy in what really is a glaring error (at least Sony would think so). Likewise, when Intel was stuck on its megahertz myth marketing, few questioned the bigger the number the faster the processor, despite the most powerful processors measured in terms of data movement mostly having slower clock speeds. These were places precision of this sort was called for, but was not applied by most journalists.
It certainly could be the case that there are apps in overseas apps stores that are not in the U.S. app store. For quite a while there was an app called "National Rail" (which allowed access to UK train schedules) which was only available in the UK app store (I think it may have had something to do with licensing of timetables?). Couldn't get the app in the U.S. Didn't even come up in the list. It has only just recently become available through the U.S. store. So, perhaps there were many other overseas apps as well, that didn't come up in the U.S. store. Could Apple have been referring to those?
ex ped: Yes. That's the difference.
I can't believe you actually *updated* this article, especially after all the negative comments! Really? REALLY?
You might want to send a message to your fellow writer, Steven Johnson, at your sister publication, "Time," who, in this week's cover story wrote, "The Apple iPhone's long-term competitive advantage ay well prove to be the more than 15,000 new applications that have been developed for the device…" Tell him it's really closer to 48,000. That'll make you feel better.
I just watched the podcast. And Forstall also says "there are more than 50,000 apps on the App Store."
So Apple is pretty certain about this; I'd think Apple is more likely to be correct than 148apps.
Are you serious, you cry because they rounded up and are shy of 50,000. Let me ask you this, if you were given the chance to have $9.99 or $10, which would you choose, it makes complete sense to take the ten even if you only made the $9.99. You really need to stop crying about this and cry about your journalism skills.
I've never seen Apple round up and overstate, so that's not it, but there are two very simple and possible explanations.
1. Apple is counting all of its App Stores, not just the US App Store.
2. Many inactive apps (but not those rejected by Apple) are still considered by Apple to be "on the App Store." 148apps doesn't count them because one can't buy them today, but Apple still does because it's still sending money to the developers for the apps that were sold over the last 2 to 3 months.
"Is this really journalism? Did you really get a college degree for this?"
I second that! How about an article comparing the new iPhone 3Gs to the Pre.
Uh-oh not a good sign – the perfect company lies (defined as not saying the truth while knowing it to be so)…
And not mentioning the tousands of WM downloadable programs and Symbians is, well, an un-true representation.
The above, the fact that the Apple presentation of new products was a yawn and the fact that Apple publicly rubbished Windows 7 on WWDC tells me that not all is shiny and bright in the brightest company ever…
Oh come on, you know how they like nice round numbers for these things. If they were so anal and strict about these things it wouldn't be Apple.
Please allow me to introduce you to a concept called rounding…
ex ped: There's also a concept called jumping the gun.
i wouldn't doubt that apple counts the apps in review yet to be posted to the public.
given how slow they are with the review process it wouldn't surprise me if that number is close to 2k.
by the way – must be a slow day to even care about such nonsense.
It looks as if DeWitless went back and edited out his comment about wanting to "break" the "news" of 50,000 apps. Any comment on that, author?
ex ped: It was a small joke that fell flat. I thought perhaps I should stop inflicting it on my gentle readers.
Sorry Phil scooped you. And you may want to have a look at that tool you're using. I'm going to guess that Phil has better access to the app store info than you do.
Interesting that Windows based phones were not on the chart. I've never had trouble finding apps for my fairly old WM5 smartphone–including several I wrote myself. I also don't have to worry about a single-source app store that censors my choices.
They have Android apps listed with the last significant digit in the 100ths place, but for iPhone apps their significant digit in the 10,000th place. That is not a scientific or reliable comparison, rather "It is like comparing Apples to oranges."
Why the fuss about Schiller's rounding up? Even if Schiller is off by 1,000 – we'll assume there are "only" 49,000 apps – that would still be TEN times more than Apple's nearest competitor.
So Schiller has a valid reason to brag.
I can't decide which is more pathetic, this article or your dreams of glory at being the one to break the news that they've actually passed 50,000. How about some real news instead of reporting on meaningless milestones and whining about rounding errors?
This is news? That they simply rounded up a little? When you were looking at that bar graph, with it's nice, round number of 50,000 on it, did you really think that was an exact figure? Of course it was an estimate! Would you be whining if they claimed 50,000 apps if they really had 51,674? This is just silly.
One of the numbers in your summary is greater than 50,000.
ex ped: But not the number Schiller cited.
Don't be upset because you didn't break the news. More than 50,000 applications have been developed. Some are no longer available. These things happen. When you break the news that 50,000 applications have been released, you'll be 3,000 or more late. How about a real article.
There are apps which are not available in US. Use your brain please. A Japanese app on how to make Sushi, by a Japanese developer, may only be available in Japan.
Also, there are IT apps written by/for companies. Those are not available on App Store.
ex ped: Schiller explicitly claimed "50,000 apps on the App Store."
I think it's funny how he left out Windows Mobile Apps. Hmmmmmmm maybe because there are much more than 50,000. Also He didn't count the Palc Classic apps that still work with the Pre. There Lies, Damned Lies, Statitics, and Apple.
Another nice bit of typical apple spin is when Phil showed that bargraph of OS-X users. Apple fanboys are cheering the mac's advancement of course…. Well what he failed to mention was that the number of OS-X users they have includes iPhone and iPod touch users (because iphone os is os-x).
Oh my he was 3% off! That may have closed the gap between them and ummmmm — hmmm. I wish you all the best in achieving your goal of breaking the news that apple truly surpassed a completely arbitrary milestone.
namaste
I can understand your argument but your graph states 'Apps available in US: 52,061.' Even though around 3,000 of those are no longer active, if one were to go to App store they would in theory be able to see over 50,000 apps. I'm guessing thats where Schiller's number comes from.
In a Keynote presentation of this type, no one wants or needs to hear the absolute precise numbers. So Apple rounded up by a measly 6% (assuming that your own numbers are correct) – big deal. You're just pissed that Apple tried to "scoop" you, though getting to 50,000 active apps is a matter of counting (and is also an inevitable event) and hardly qualifies as breaking news when it happens, but I'm sure you'll act like you reinvented the wheel when it does.
At the start of the conference Phil mentioned 5200 developers from 54 countries. Perhaps the 50K apps counts apps in other countries that are not available in the US app store.
Wow, this article gives a whole new meaning to the term "nitpicker". Must be a REALLY slow news day if this is all you can find to write about. So WHAT is Apple inflated its app number by a few thousand. EVERY company plays it fast and loose with the numbers when it's to their advantage. The POINT is that Apple is CRUSHING the competition. So I late to let the air out of your little "conspiracy" investigation, but NO ONE CARES.
Mr. Elmer DeWitt must be struggling to find a worthwhile story topic if he's focusing his attention towards this. Surely there is more important business news to cover.
Dear Psycho Apple Users-
Calm down. I'm pretty sure you're the same people who fact-check the hell outta anything that Apple didn't create. This was a perfectly valid item to point out: 3000 less than the heralded 50000 would make it about 6% overstated. 1 or 2% would be understandable for rounding's sake but what Apple's mouthpiece basically did is lie to the public – one cannot just assume they are "counting" the magical realm of "international" app stores, and if they did you know it was for the express purpose of making the 50k claim earlier than before.
I guess it comes back to fact-checking in the end, if you can't check Apple's claims – then why would anyone believe them or take offense that someone is critical? I guess the same people who think that a credit card means they have extra cash to spend.