Several years ago I released an app (a free game) for iOS, which was largely unsucessful, settling to around an average of 5 downloads a month (terrible, I know). However, I recently happend to notice a huge (relatively) spike in downloads, up to around 300 downloads over the last 10 days.
Something seems strange about this latest batch of downloads however, for one thing they are all from China (My app is only localized for English, and never marketed outside the U.S.), and the "Active devices (opt-in only)" statistic shows 3 devices used over that same time period.
Even stranger, the "Product Page Views" statistic shows only 6 views over this same period that had 300 downloads?!
Is something nefarious going on, or might there be a benign explanation for this huge spike in downloads?
If anyone is curious, or if it helps find the cause, the app is Acorn Mayhem, as found here. (Note: this is not intended as self promotion, and if including the link violates stack overflow rules, feel free to edit it out)
in response to being put on hold:
This question appears to have been put on hold as "off topic", I don't belive it should be, it does involve tools used directly and exclusively for programming (iTunes connect, which is only used by programmers) It would not be seen by the people who actually use it if it was on superuser, and I think the number of other people who have experienced the same problem and replied in a short time shows that it is on topic and helpful to a large portion of the programming community.
There is a thread on Apple forums about the issue https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/84146
I reported this to Apple yesterday through iTunesConnect and received a call back today (my spike started 8/16 and is just starting to trail off now). They are investigating this; the call lasted over 10 minutes. They promised to keep me in the loop so I will report back when I hear something.
same here too. a game I released a year ago had very few downloads. Over the last two months I have seen a slight increase in downloads, 1 or 2, maybe up to 5 per day, all from China. All of a sudden in the last week I have seen 50, 80, and yesterday it peaked at 123 downloads.
I should also mention, this is a free game, with AdMob adverts.
Either the people who download the game aren't actually playing it at all (not one single ad show in China) or AdMob just doesn't work in China ???
either way - I've had about 500 downloads in the last week compared to ~300 in the entire previous year.
there is an IAP to upgrade the game and remove ads, needless to say, not one single user has paid.
a very strange situation. I wish I knew what was driving the Chinese downloads but I can't find anything pointing to my game ?! Also iTunes Connect seems to say they are coming from store browsing ?!
curiouser and curiouser ...
Similar story here:
I have 2 apps, that I made about 2 years ago basically for fun. They get about 20-35 downloads per day. Since 17 Aug, they receive about 120-150 per day, all the extra downloads from China. These numbers don't have any effect on my admob performance, and no significant changes on firebase. I call them ghost-downloads.
I switched one of the apps from free to paid. The downloads for that app went down to zero (as I expected)
If you want to have an accurate real user traffic stats, check the "Daily Active Users" & "Daily Active Devices" from itunes connect as reference.
From my own stats, I can see there are extra ~100 download spike daily from Chinese market, but the DAU stays the same, which means these downloads were not initiated by users, might be a 3rd party app crawler automated the crawling for apps using simulators or automation iOS devices. So don't worry about it, the trend should go away in a while.
If you are curious which 3rd party app crawlers are downloading your apps, google "[your app name] + 应用", you should find tons of them. Websites like these crawl lots of app data and run SEO to attract traffic, and benefits from online advertisements (adsense, etc.)
I have the same phenomenon across free apps in the App store. It results in approximately 1000 downloads from China per day, spread pretty evenly across about 15 apps. Each app download is around 100-200MB so that implies a reasonable burden on the App store servers if it is happening with other apps also. I contacted Apple and they did not seem to ask anything but questions that clearly indicated a complete lack of interest in understanding the issue. They suggested that the problem was not a problem but a volume download program. They then asked to see screenshots from affected users.
The exact same thing happened to me (hundreds of extra downloads per day from China only) within the past week. It's not just one app but every one I have created so far. At first I thought it was an iTunes Connect bug but maybe my apps were just featured somewhere public? There are over a Billion people there after all. ;)
I would like to confirm this, and share some data as well. Take a look. The deviation in traffic started around mid of July, and all of my apps have been downloaded roughly in the same amount. Few days ago I noticed that downloads returned to their normal level. All of abnormal purchases took place from China. Maybe this will shed some light on the source, but I doubt that this traffic generated by real people.
At first I thought this was great news, a lot of downloads, but then my cynical side popped in. Perhaps they are downloading the IPAs unzipping them and looking at the source code. They would only have the front end, but that's half the solution. Here is an article about pirated apps
https://www.cultofmac.com/224075/china-has-its-own-app-store-that-lets-users-install-pirated-ios-apps-without-jailbreaking/
You want to look for ways to obfuscate your code.
Updates:
By the end of September my abnormal Chinese ghost-downloads have disappeared. Everything is back to normal.
On the 8th of September I experienced something much more extreme an unexpected: Approximately 6000 "downloads" from Sweden. It happened only once.
Since changed Sales and Trends interface on iTunes Connect, I can't find my yesterday's statistic. I'm just able to see least 3 day's (yesterday not including) statistics.
How can I see how much downloads/earnings I had yesterday?
P.S: Daily report section is also not works propably. Sales on daily reports and sales on iTunes Connect iphone app are different.
Itunes Connect doesn't seem to allow for viewing one day anymore.
If you're having trouble with iTunes connect, I suggest you use this free iOS app to track sales: https://github.com/omz/Appsales-Mobile
I have used it for years and it's great. It estimates r
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At the bottom of the second page Apple's In-App Purchase Guidelines it says that virtual currency is not allowed to be sold through In-App purchases. However, many games on the app store today sell "coins" or something similar that the user then spends on various upgrades or powers. I am designing an app that should do something similar, but I obviously do not want it to get rejected. Can anyone shed some light on this situation? Also, if the items that are bought through the credit are non-consumable, will Apple host them? And can I track which ones have been bought and how many times if they are bought through the credit?
This is a great question. I think the virtual currency apps are like fart machines and flashlight apps: They were accepted into the store at first, but Apple eventually realized they didn't want that type of app on their store. So those apps that got accepted, they are still on the store, but from now on, no more.
As for your second and third questions, Apple isn't going to host any of the content of your game or app beyond what you can get into iCloud; they only record which things which people bought. So if someone bought 1000 coins 12 times, Apple will know that, but you have to keep track of how many coins the customer has left via iCloud or your own server.
Update: It looks like Apple will accept In-App purchase of virtual currency per the Apple Store Review Guidelines. Section 11.4 states:
Apps that use IAP to purchase credits or other currencies must consume
those credits within the application
So as long as the currency is redeemable within your application, it's fine. However, right in the introduction, it does say:
We don't need any more Fart apps.
So fart apps are out, but virtual currency is OK!
I think woz is right about how existing apps got there with virtual "coins", that they were submitted before Apple tightened the guidelines. Subsequent updates might get rejected. The main issue is that a virtual currency means you're able to alter the exchange rate, so a purchase of $5 worth of virtual coins could subsequently be devalued to $2 worth of virtual coins if the user doesn't redeem them in time. That's consistent with Apple's guideline that "it is important that users know the specific good or service they are buying."
As for tracking purchases of items, a non-consumable product is something that can only be purchased once: If the user tries to purchase it again, the store will tell you that the purchase succeeded, but it won't result in a second transaction. If you want something that can be purchased multiple times, then you need to track that yourself, and make it a consumable product.
I know the review process is unpredictable at best. To avoid a discussion of opinions, I'm looking for answers from people who have submitted apps without localizations, then submitted the same app later with the only changes being the addition of localization in several languages.
If the review process is significantly longer than the original app, then the answer may be yes.
I'm curious if they need to send the app to different countries for review, as some countries will block certain types if information (China, for example).
Of course if you can post information other than this which is still relevant it would be appreciated.
If you are submitting the app during the christmas holiday season rush, review times may be more. The average per day app submission in this time is lot higher due to Apple shutdown during holidays, and developers trying to get their app just in time before shutdown.
That said, here's my observation for non-holiday seasons submission. We have an app that has been localized for 24 locales, including China. I never experienced any specific pattern in changes in review times before localization was put (was english only at one time, later all the localizations were added) vs after localizations were added. I had one time an update that went live within 48 hours of submission with around 19 localizations (including chinese, finnish, russian etc in it) in it. On the other hand, once a Finnish only app that I submitted took almost 2 weeks. Most of my apps are utility or education.
I think its more to do with type of app + rating (if its got some controversial material in it) + when you submit it (christmas holiday season or not).
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Pretty self explanatory...Which day of the week does the App Store get the most traffic?
I run into this dilemma every time I release an app. Anybody have raw statistics and not just anecdotes?
Edit I'm referring to actual App Store visitor traffic. I'm trying to maximize views as a new release. Don't have a lot of marketing budget so those early days count.
I can't imagine why this is really much of a dilemma that you run into every time you release an app.I really don't feel this is the kind of thing you should be worried about if your goal is to actually increase the appeal of your app. There are so many more important and more consistent variables, especially compared to the small handful of potential browsers that this kind of "optimization" might bring you.
Here are some more important things to concern yourself with:
The quality of your app.
See number one.
...oh yeah, and also see The Guide to App Store Marketing for more pro tips.
Only Apple have the real numbers. Developers might be able to tell you which days they get the most sales on, but this isn't quite the same as where the traffic comes from.
Anecdotally, it seems that the days you get most of your sales depends on the type of app. Games do better on weekends and holidays. My apps (social networking) are pretty consistent across the whole week.
There is no universal best day of the week for apps. The target audience for one type of app will have a different schedule with respect to people interested into different kind of apps.
For a particular app analyze the audience and their typical behavior and work out the best schedule for that given app. Expect to redo the work if you bring out a different app.
You are actually better off by monitoring the daily and weekly download/sales figures and use that numbers as a basis for timing an update. Users like updates to their apps and unless you have available an industrial size advertising budget then word of mouth tends to be the best bet.