Everything You Need to Know About the New Apple TV App Store

The long awaited Apple TV App Store opened about a month ago, and since we happen to be into apps that got us pretty excited. We started tracking the new store when it had just opened in late October, and have been keeping a close watch on its progress for a little over a month now. Armed with a database full of apps we set out to share some of the things we’re seeing.

We’ve crunched the numbers and have answered some questions we’ve been getting about the new App Store. Read on for details and interactive charts (a brand new addition to our blog), or skip all the fun and go directly to the highlights at the bottom.

How many apps are there?

There are currently 2,624 apps available for download in the Apple TV App Store. That’s quite a number considering the store is just about a month old. With a pretty steady rate of growth so far, we estimate the store will be hitting 5,000 apps in about a month and 10,000 apps in early 2016.

Let’s take a closer look at the category make up. A common question is which category is the largest? If you’re thinking games you’re not wrong! The Games category is the single largest category on the Apple TV App Store with 1,002 apps. This means Games make up roughly 38% of all Apple TV apps.

This distribution looks fairly healthy with games leading the pack and entertainment trailing behind. For a device that’s connected to your television this makes a lot of sense. We were a bit surprised to see the Shopping category consisting of just 9 apps. With the holiday season closing in we’d expected retailers to jump on this new opportunity. Maybe next year.

As we look through categories there’s something important we should make note of — while developers can publish apps to more than 20 main categories, only seven are currently visible in the Apple TV. We marked those categories with a darker shade of blue. We’re not sure how Apple is deciding which categories to open up, but did notice all apps are downloadable if you search them.

How are they monetizing?

Monetizing on any app store is as challenge, but due to the lack of ads (from Apple’s iAd or 3rd parties), the options are a bit more limited and so developers are currently forced to monetize by charging for their app, or using in-app purchases.

Looking at the data we were a bit surprised. Our expectation, especially for the early batch of apps, was to see the majority of apps being free with in-app purchases. That however does not seem to be the case — 39% of apps on the Apple TV App Store are paid apps.

If this trend continues it could mean great news for developers, signaling that consumers trust the new device to provide them with an experience that’s worth paying for upfront.

Just how much are developers charging? For that, let’s break down those paid apps by price tier.

The majority of paid apps cost $2.99 or less. The race to the bottom hasn’t graced the Apple TV App Store, but it’s worth noting that there are a few brave developers that are challenging that, pricing their apps as high as $59.99.

What are consumers downloading?

Now that we know what’s available and what it costs, let’s take a look at what consumers actually want. To do that we’ve looked up the top 50 apps and grouped them by category.

While there are more games than apps in any other single category, games don’t seem to dominate the top charts (yet?). Instead, it’s Entertainment that’s leading the pack with Games being somewhat of a distant second. The Apple TV could possibly be a great gaming (depends who you ask), but so far consumers are using it to stream their favorite shows. That’s why the top 10 apps are all streaming apps from popular services and cable channels.

While the Apple TV is still fairly small, it’s showing great signs of growth and with the holidays coming up has the potential to turn into a more substantial revenue source for developers very soon. We’ll be keeping an eye on the new store and will put out an updated analysis in the new year that looks at growth, so stay tuned and join the mailing list to be the first to know about it.

Highlights

• There are 2,624 apps on the Apple TV App Store.
• An average of 447 new apps are added to the store every week.
• 38% of all apps are games.
• The categories with the most apps are: Games, Entertainment, and Education.
• There are more than 20 categories apps can be submitted to but only 7 are currently visible.
• 61% of all apps are free
• 85% of paid apps cost between $0.99 and $2.99.
• Entertainment apps dominate the top charts (28 of the Top 50).
• Only 8 of the top 50 apps are games.

The data

This analysis was done using our comprehensive app catalog which we make available commercially through Appbase. The catalog contains over 4 million apps from all major app stores, including all Apple TV apps in all categories.

Are you making apps for the Apple TV? Sign up for a free trial and start tracking your apps the right way!

Originally published at blog.appfigures.com on December 9, 2015.