It's all about bots

In March, the number of downloads of free apps in the United States decreased for the first time in six months. And solidly – by 30%. Following this, the cost of attracting users also dropped a little. Perhaps it’s all about the war that Apple has declared on bots. 

Fiksu found that the daily number of free downloads dropped to the level of September-October 2011. So if in February 2012 about 6.35 million applications were downloaded every day, then in March no more than 4.45 million. 

The most likely reason is the fight that Apple gave to bot farms (computers that are used to automatically download free apps from the App Store) in February-March of this year. This is also stated in the original report, however, very cautiously: “An unexpected factor in the drop in downloads could be a reduction in the use of robotic installations.”

The fact that the cost of attracting users has decreased quite slightly (from $1.31 in February to $1.30 in March) proves once again that the reason for the decrease in the number of downloads was precisely the fight against bots. In the event that a third of users really left the App Store, we would witness a sharp drop in the average cost of attracting a loyal user.