This is all Microsoft had to say about ‘Windows Momentum’ last week. (See image.)
…so I did some digging and calculations. Here are some figures that might help ISVs more than the useless figures given by Microsoft.
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Windows 8 Store has 1% share of US app-purchases
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Windows 8 Store has 1.4% share of global app-downloads
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Windows 8 has 0.5% share of the global internet app-devices market.
A 1% share of revenue would give a value of around $250 million for the global Windows 8 Store economy.
(App devices = Windows 8+tablets+smartphones. Working notes below.)
There’s lots of room for error in my figures here but a range of 0.5%-1.5% seems about right and gives app developers an idea of basic economics for Windows 8 Store. It’s not good based on raw figures.
BUT, there are ‘opportunities.’ in this fledgling market. A chance to grow a new brand. A chance to get development and marketing support from Microsoft and PC manufacturers. A chance to target specific new markets not addresses by tablets or smartphones (given the high processing power, for example.) Potentially, although I haven’t really thought much about the figures, a lower cost of acquisition.
Finally there’s a chance that the future unification of W8/WP8 stores will at least double your audience and may boost the sales numbers.
Given the high cost of development and marketing in IOS and Android stores now and the low cost of porting (one software CEO I spoke to last week said the cost was minimal, 10% on top of existing IOS and Android development costs) it could be worth making a more than just a test investment in the Windows 8 Store.
The final question is, do you wait for BUILD (to see what the roadmap looks like for Windows 9) or do you start now?
More detail on those stats. (my rough notes)
App Purchases
2 in 5 Windows 8 devices sold in the US are touch-enabled.
That’s roughly 2 million touch-enabled laptops/windows tablets per month in the US. (5 million Windows 8 devices per month in US)
Now, how many people are using Metro?
How many of those people are paying for apps?
My estimate: 50% experimenting with Metro, installed some free apps. 25% buy an app in a month.
= 0.25 * 5 million. 1.25,000 app purchases per month in the US.
In total, 150 million app purchases occur in the US each month. (Based on a bunch of public numbers I just crunched.)
Windows 8 Store accounts for around 1% of app purchases.
App Downloads
4 million app downloads per day is high. (Global figure given by MS)
Gartner estimate 102 billion downloads in 2013 = 270 million per day globally. Windows 8 = 1.4%
App-enabled Devices
Windows 8 is 10% of global market of online PCs. Let’s say 100 Million Windows 8 (app-enabled) PCs connected (not 200 million – that’s licenses sold.)
There are about 2 billion internet connected ‘app-enabled other devices’ (tablets and smartphones)
100 million of 2.1 billion ‘app enabled (tablet+smartphone+Win8)’ devices = 0.5% share.
Some sources used:
