Detailed iPhone App IPA Statistics

May 9, 2011

I did some data mining related to my iHasApp API project recently. Specifically, on the Top 2000 Free iPhone apps (a whopping 25.28 GB of compressed data, and 1.5% of all available free apps).

By analyzing the app’s iTunesMetadata.plist and Info.plist, you can learn a few things that aren’t available anywhere else. For example (note that my dataset is for Free apps), did you know that:

• 92% of apps are below the cellular download limit (20MB)
• Nearly 10% of apps are built using the obsolete iOS 2 & 3
• 31% of apps don’t multitask, 11 months after iOS 4.0
• Only 27% support URL Schemes (inter-app communication)
• 18% of URL Schemes are for the Facebook iOS SDK
• 70% of apps disable the automatic iPhone icon gloss

For more detailed information from my data mining, as well as a histogram at the end, see below. There is accompanying information for those who are curious as to how I attained said information. Just google the term next to each section heading.

Overall

• 2000 Top Free iPhone Apps
• Cumulative Size: 25.28 GB

IPA Sizes [NSFileSize]

• Minimum: 0.07 MB
• 1st Quartile: 2.35 MB
• Median: 5.08 MB
• 3rd Quartile: 11.26 MB
• Mean: 12.64 MB
• Maximum: 1927 MB

SDK Versions [DTSDKName]

• 36 apps built with iOS 2.X

  • 10 from iOS 2.0
  • 3 from iOS 2.1
  • 23 from iOS 2.2

• 149 apps built with iOS 3.X

  • 77 from iOS 3.0
  • 49 from iOS 3.1
  • 23 from iOS 3.2

• 1814 apps built with iOS 4.X

  • 149 from iOS 4.0
  • 162 from iOS 4.1
  • 917 from iOS 4.2
  • 586 from iOS 4.3

Multitasking [UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend]

• 431 apps specifically disable multitasking
• 186 apps were built with pre-4.0 sdks
• A total of 617 ( 30.85%) apps don’t multitask

URL Schemes [CFBundleURLSchemes]

• 539 apps contain at least one url scheme
• 694 total url schemes
• 126 Facebook SDK url schemes

Glossy Icons [UIPrerenderedIcon]

• 1391 apps specifically disable icon glossing