iPhone users fickle when it comes to apps

When it comes to applications, it appears iPhone users have very short attention spans.

Just 30 per cent of people who buy an iPhone application actually use it the day after it was purchased, according to Pinch Media, which analysed more than 30 million downloads from Apple's App Store. And the numbers plunge from there: after 20 days, less than five per cent of those who downloaded an application are actively using it, with a worse drop off for free applications.

GigaOm and TechCrunch noticed this trend last August - but back then, with the App Store just a month old, it was hard to know whether that usage model would last.

But seven months, 15,000 applications and 500 million downloads later, things haven't changed. App Store activity continues to be huge; Apple has made the App Store the centrepiece of its iPhone marketing over the last few months, highlighting the breadth and depth of applications that are available on the App Store for business and entertainment.

But if most people don't have the staying power with iPhone applications, does it matter how many exist?

But according to Pinch Media CEO Greg Yardley, Apple has built such an easy-to-use distribution platform for iPhone applications that people find it very easy to move between on to the next app. The lack of a try-before-you-buy feature means iPhone users have no choice but to take the plunge, and given that most iPhone applications are free and the ones that do cost money are inexpensive, there's little incentive to carefully shop around.

Only about 10 per cent of iPhone applications appear to retain an audience over time and most of those are games, entertainment applications such as movie listings, and social networking tools such as Facebook.

But developers are still making plenty of money from the other 90 per cent, Yardley said. He advises developers to charge something for their application rather than trying to depend on a free/ad-subsidised model, because the number of people viewing those ads will plummet the day after the application lands on their iPhones.

At some point, however, Apple will need to find a better way to help developers promote their applications, he said. "The App Store fails as a promotional mechanism. There's only so much screen real estate" that Apple can use within the App Store window to promote applications, Yardley said, and if you don't get on those Top 100 or Staff Favorites lists, your application languishes.

Original article: Most iPhone applications gathering dust from CNET News.com