Monday, January 25, 2010

The Android Market sweet spot & USW hits the 'final milestone'


The Ultimate Stopwatch & Timer for Android has just made it passed the 'final milestone' of 250,000 installs, great stuff. It's my second app to have reached the dizzy heights so far, the next is a couple of months away yet at around 150k. Seems like new device sales are keeping the install rates strong. Reaching 250k has a bizarre effect of dramatically increasing install rates. It is apparently a far more complelling proposition to install an app with >250k installs, almost as if the user starts believing they're missing out on something great. Battery Widget has rocketed from 250k to 450k installs in less than 2 months.




It seems, even though the Android Market is getting pretty busy these days, that if you focus on users desires it is still possible to get decent traction. Live Wallpapers are the sweet spot at the moment, they are being searched for by Nexus 1 users and a decent one will get thousands of downloads in the first week. I spent an hour creating 'Duck Paper' last week and it is now at 3,500 downloads. Content apps are a little trickier, especially if you don't have a recognised brand behind you, make them specific and easy to use, then update weekly.

5 comments:

tvking63 said...

I'm using Ultimate Stopwatch on a Droid with 2.0, and even though the app says to "Touch watch to start/pause", touching the screen ANYWHERE performs this function. Limiting start/pause to the actual watch image, or better yet, a button like the the Reset button would reduce accidental start/pause problems.
Otherwise I like it a lot.

Unknown said...

I echo Todd's comment also in the market there is a way to see your laps on a separate screen which isn't happening on my Droid 2.0.1. It would be very useful to export\copy lap data to a doc or csv file. I otherwise like the app very much.

Unknown said...

it used to have saving time property. but not anymore. why..?

Anonymous said...

it used to have saving time property. but not anymore. why..?

Unknown said...

That was indeed a feature in an old version. When all the different screen size devices came out I dropped the functionality to simplify the app. As it is a totally free app I don't have much time to dedicate to it.