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App Store Data Studies

Original research from our own index of the App Store. Each study takes a real question, computes the answer across tens of thousands of apps, and explains what it means, no guesswork, no invented numbers.

These are not opinion pieces or roundups. Every figure below is computed directly from the App Store metadata we track and refreshes as the data does. Where a finding touches one of our live record boards or tools, we link straight to it so you can dig into the underlying apps yourself.

Data Study The Real Price of the App Store What tens of thousands of apps reveal about who pays, how much, and where the money hides. Data Study Do App Store Ratings Lie? Almost every app is "4.5 stars." The rating count is where the truth is. Data Study How Long Do Apps Actually Last? Most apps are quietly abandoned. Here is how long they survive, and how many still ship. Data Study Who Makes the App Store? The vast majority of developers ship exactly one app. A tiny few ship hundreds. Data Study How Global Is the App Store? Over half of all apps speak only one language. A minority are built for the world. Data Study The Size of Everything How heavy apps have become, which categories bloat, and the gigabyte club. Data Study Who Are Apps Made For? How the App Store splits by age rating, and which categories skew grown-up. Data Study The App Store, by Category Which categories are the biggest, the best rated, the priciest, and the most crowded. Data Study How Modern Must Your iPhone Be? The typical app still runs on an iPhone from years ago. Minimum-iOS requirements, translated into the actual iPhones they rule out. Data Study How Apps Sell Themselves Most apps fill over half their ten screenshot slots. The extremes are the real tell. Data Study When the App Store's Apps Were Born The store is a mix of ancient survivors and this year's newcomers. Here is the age map. Data Study How Apps Describe Themselves Some say it in a sentence; others write to the 4,000-character limit. What description length reveals. Data Study iPhone-Only or iPad-Ready? Only a third of apps bother with the iPad. Which ones do, and what that says about the tablet. Data Study Free vs Paid: Who Rates Higher? The comfortable assumption is that paying buys a better app. The ratings say otherwise. Data Study The Update Treadmill How much of the App Store is actively maintained, and how big the abandoned tail really is. Data Study The Languages the App Store Forgets English is in nine of ten apps. For the world's other billions of speakers, the store looks very different. Data Study What Apps Actually Warn You About Behind every age rating is a list of specific warnings � violence, gambling, mature themes. Here is what the store is really flagging. Data Study How Alike Is Each Country's App Store? The US and UK charts are near-clones. Others share almost nothing. We measured the App Store's borders. Data Study The Colour of the App Store We sorted thousands of app icons by colour. One hue dominates every home screen — and it is not close.

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