If you are a Windows developer, you would’ve noticed the Explore Store Trends section of the Windows Store Dashboard. The trends section includes user demographics and catalog information. Since few developers can draw useful interpretation from those numbers, Windows App Builder Blog has shared interesting statistics about the most popular app categories.
The following data is based on the Windows Store app downloads between August 1, 2013 and October 31, 2013.
The following graph shows the percentage of all downloads grouped by category. Over the last three months, Games was the category with highest number of downloads, three times higher than the next most popular category. No surprises there, I think. The next popular categories are Entertainment, Tools, Social, and Music.
Another interesting metric is the incremental download opportunity. It is useful to understand which category has the highest ratio of downloads per app. This is a function of total downloads vs. total available apps in that category.
As the graph suggests, Social is the top category with most downloads per app, almost twice more average downloads per app than the second category. Photos, Productivity, and Games are the next categories with the highest opportunity. The metric implies that these categories present the highest potential for downloads for developers.
It is interesting to note that while Games has the highest number of downloads, but since there are more apps in this category, the competition is higher. As a result, there is a lower number of average downloads per app in Games than in Productivity or Photos.
These trends provide useful insights for developers as they build new apps or improve existing apps. What are your key takeaways from these trends?
Source: Windows App Builder Blog
