Edible Apple

With the holiday shopping season now firmly behind us, an untold mass of people are busy getting acquainted with new iPhones and iPod Touch devices, and it only makes sense that many of them are migrating en masse to the iTunes App Store to see what all the fuss is about. So it makes sense that this weekend would see a noticeable increase in app store downloads across the board, and one report suggests that the level of downloads during the Christmas weekend this year may be 28x higher than it was during the same period in question a year ago.

The report is based on data released by Mobclix, one of the leading ad networks on the iPhone platform. Mobclix co-founder Sunil Verma said of the increase: “Consumers are looking to personal devices as a key source of entertainment and the game app market is seeing a surge. With the data from last year and information on this year’s trends, it’s clear that a lot of time and money will be spent on iPhone games this week. Developers are in a good position to monetize their games through smart marketing and ad decisions.”

Meanwhile, Flurry Analytics released data showing that downloads for the iPod Touch exceeded iPhone downloads by a whopping 172% over Christmas day, which basically confirms that the iPod Touch was a heavily gifted item. But that’s not to say that iPhone downloads didn’t see a bump, with data showing that iPhone 3G downloads this past Friday were 900% higher compared to all previous Fridays in December. And no doubt driven by iTunes holiday gift cards and what can only be described as a heavy influx of new devices, iPod Touch downloads jumped by more than 1000% on December 25th.

Also impressive is that app store downloads increased by 51% from November to December. By way of comparison, app store downloads increased by only 15% from October to November. Meanwhile, Android downloads also saw a holiday bump, but only increased by 22% over the past month.

And speaking of skyrocketing app store downloads, we should also point out that Tapulous, which is no stranger to app store success, decided to make their hit app Tap Tap Revenge 3 a free download a few days ago and the result has been nothing short of astounding. In just a 24 hour period over Christmas Eve, the app was downloaded over 300,00 times – and while you may think that they’re losing out on a lot of money, bear in mind that they may very well more than make up for that lost initial sale through the use of in-app downloads, a model which has been very successful for the Tap Tap Revenge franchise. Just 1 week ago, Tapulous stated that their revenue from the iTunes App Store was closing in on $1 million a month, and that’s after Apple takes its 30% cut.