iPhone App Directory

Google Developer Stats are a big step in the right direction


Looks like Google has updated the stats they provide to marketplace developers. So I'm interested to know Apple devs get anything like this?

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2 comments:

Synthetic Bits said...

Apple doesn't give you any of that info. We used to put Pinchmedia analytics software in our apps for this. It also let us know anonymized info on how often people used our apps, which parts of the apps people were actually using, etc, which was helpful to try to figure out where to spend our development time. Should we improve feature X that 5% of our customers use, or instead use that dev time to support older iOS version Y which 6% of our customers use. That sort of thing.

At some point though, Apple got upset with Pinchmedia/Flurry for releasing the data they were seeing, things like new unreleased iOS versions and devices that Apple was still testing, and Apple said that this sort of analytics software would no longer be permitted. So we yanked it all out of all our apps. Later Apple softened up their stance a bit, I think, but we didn't bother putting it back in since they might change their minds again.

The ideal solution would be for them to create and support these sorts of features themselves. They could control the flow of info, permit us to see what they want us to see, protect both user privacy and their own privacy, and we could use what they do give us to improve our apps. Apple in general is reluctant to share info though. It's a bummer for us, because we don't even know, for instance, how many people buy our universal app for iPad vs iPhone. Kind of an important thing to know when you're deciding how to spend your development time, or what sort of app to create next.

Google already does all this stuff for the web, so I think they understand a little more how it's useful. And more importantly, Google also understands how to monetize it, which in reality, is the reason they are doing it.

johnnyg0 said...

@Art
"At some point though, Apple got upset with Pinchmedia/Flurry for releasing the data they were seeing...and Apple said that this sort of analytics software would no longer be permitted"

Apple got upset when they found out they could be the only ones to use and profit from the analytic data on their platform.

Fixed that for you :)