For iOS games developers hoping to crack it into the top 25 downloads list on Apple's App Store, these stats may prove a little bit disheartening. Distimo have completed their research on the US iTunes App Store for April 2012, and the results have shown how disproportionally popular and competitive the games section is when compared to all the other categories available.
The charts by Distimo show that games developers will have to achieve roughly seven times the amount of daily downloads required to crack it in both the top 25 free and paid charts (25,300 and 22,800 downloads) compared to the next most popular app store category which is Entertainment (6,700 downloads to crack it in the top 25 free chart, and 3,500 for paid). In fact, for the paid charts, games will need to make more downloads to be placed in the top 25 for games than all the downloads of all the other categories *combined*. The research suggests that the easiest way to get listed in a chart is with a weather app where only 300 daily downloads are needed.
Titles that make it in the top 25 charts are listed right away as soon as users open the app store on their mobile devices which means a considerable boost in exposure and sales, so it's a highly sought-after goal for developers. And while download numbers for the Australian market will undoubtedly fare differently to the U.S statistics since the market here is much smaller, these charts will likely show a similar pattern in popularity for games here.
There are some additional charts which break down the games category and the download amounts for each genre which will be highly informative for games developers, so head on over to the Distimo website for all the details!!