نظرانداز کرکے مرکزی مواد پر جائیں

As Mobile App Downloads Skyrocket, MP3 Rates Level Off

Our appetite for downloading apps is tremendous, and just seems to keep on growing, and yet our need to download other forms of digital entertainment isn’t nearly as staggering.

Market intelligence blog Asymco found that the rate we’re downloading iOS apps at these days absolutely dwarfs iTunes music downloads, and crushes iBooks downloads. Only in recent months though have total app downloads exceeded mp3 downloads.

We’re downloading approximately 34 million iOS apps each day, weighing in somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 billion app downloads per month. Mp3 downloads, however, are relatively modest in comparison: We’re downloading 8.3 million songs every day. Up until around 2010, the rate of iTunes song downloads increased steadily, but has leveled off over the past year. In comparison, iOS users’ year-over-year appetite for apps is practically exponential.

Unlike music and literature, apps are relatively versatile. They’re a source of entertainment, they’re a way to discover new information, they’re a way to keep your life organized. While important, music and books are primarily consumption-based forms of entertainment and enrichment — wonderful cultural objects, though not immediately practical.

There’s another factor potentially affecting the number of songs we’re downloading from iTunes: The rise of streaming music services. There are a host of competing alternatives including Google Music Beta,Turntable.fm, Rdio and Spotify. Many of these are also available in app form, negating the need to download a bunch of songs onto your mobile device.

Before smartphones came into wide use, we were all obsessed with loading up our iPods and mp3 players with music. Now, smartphones are replacing the need for a dedicated mp3 player.

Similarly, we just don’t accumulate books the way we consume apps or music. They’re generally a more expensive purchase (in 2010, the average iBooks purchase was $12.31). Compare that to the App Store, where around 80 percent of the content is free, while the average paid apps price is around $1.44. iTunes song downloads generally hover around a buck.

With iOS and Android neck and neck in the mobile race, it’ll be interesting to see how these patterns play out over the next few years. Will we continue to download apps at increasingly astounding rates, or will we eventually hit critical mass and slow down a bit? Guess we’ll have to see.

via GigaOM

تبصرے

اس بلاگ سے مقبول پوسٹس

News

Ehtasabi Amal Lahore احتسابي عمل لاھور

Drone Wars: The rationale.The Drone Wars are the new black.

The Drone Wars are the new black. The once covert, highly-secretive and little talked about strategy of using unmanned aerial vehicles to target suspected terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere has gone mainstream. And now everyone is talking about it. Even Leon Panetta, the former C.I.A. director, whose old agency doesn't officially admit that its drone program exists, is talking about it. Twice in a matter of hours last week he joked about the C.I.A.'s pension for deploying the ominously-named Predator drones. “Obviously I have a hell of a lot more weapons available to me here than I had at the C.I.A.,” he said, referring to his new post as secretary of defense. “Although the Predators aren’t bad.” Complete coverage: The Drone Wars Later that same day, on the tarmac of a naval air base, he said, coyly, that the use of Predators are “something I was very familiar with in my old job.” Soon after, a Predator armed with hellfire missiles took flight from the runway, bound for Libya...

Pasha, one of the most powerful men in the South Asian nation, told the all-party gathering that US military action against insurgents in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s intelligence chief on Thursday denied US accusations that the country supports the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant group blamed for an attack on the American embassy in Kabul. “There are other intelligence networks supporting groups who operate inside Afghanistan. We have never paid a penny or provided even a single bullet to the Haqqani network,” Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha told Reuters after meeting political leaders over heavily strained US-Pakistani ties. Pasha, one of the most powerful men in the South Asian nation, told the all-party gathering that US military action against insurgents in Pakistan would be unacceptable and the army would be capable of responding, local media said. But he later said the reports were “baseless”. Pakistan has long faced US demands to attack militants on its side of the border with Afghanistan, but pressure has grown since the top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, accused Pasha’s Inter-Services Intelligence ...