July 30th, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Platforms: iOS | No Comments »
Flurry, a company specializing in iPhone statistics shows that indie developers have no problem competing with well established publishers. In fact, they belong to a New Middle Class.
Flurry's study compares the App Store with the classical operator decks (in this case AT&T) and narrowed the results down to just mobile games. Games represent 19% of the app store catalogue according to Apptism (July 2009).
When looking at the operator deck, EA Mobile conquered 36% of the top 25. Namco and Gameloft share the second place at 12% and Glu holds 8%. The only smaller developers in the list are Magmic and Gosub 60.
When looking at the top 25 paid games in the App Store, Gameloft is leading at 12%. 22 others follow at second place. They all hold 4% (which is one game). EA Mobile, Namco and Glu are not even in the top 25. Just before Flurry made the lists, Gameloft dropped the price of a lot of titles which might have improved their results. A lot of the developers that have a second place listing in the top 25 are new ones, though the criteria for that haven't exactly been specified.
Flurry also made a snapshot of the App Store from 09-08 till 07-09 to calculate the number of releases from established and new developers/publishers. Overall, the new publishers released 55% of the titles. This shows there is enough room in this market to support indie developers.
