Title: Profitable App Profiles for the App Store and Google Play Markets
Introduction
Our aim in this project is to find mobile app profiles that are profitable for the App Store and Google Play markets. We're working as data analysts for a company that builds Android and iOS mobile apps, and our job is to enable our team of developers to make data-driven decisions with respect to the kind of apps they build.
At our company, we only build apps that are free to download and install, and our main source of revenue consists of in-app ads. This means that our revenue for any given app is mostly influenced by the number of users that use our app. Our goal for this project is to analyze data to help our developers understand what kinds of apps are likely to attract more users.
Methodology
As of September 2018, there were approximately 2 million iOS apps available on the App Store, and 2.1 million Android apps on Google Play.
Collecting data for over four million apps requires a significant amount of time and money, so we'll try to analyze a sample of data instead. To avoid spending resources with collecting new data ourselves, we should first try to see whether we can find any relevant existing data at no cost. Luckily, these are two data sets that seem suitable for our purpose:
Let's start by opening the two data sets and then continue with exploring the data.
from csv import reader
### The Google Play data set ###
opened_file = open ('googleplaystore.csv')
read_file = reader (opened_file)
android = list (read_file)
android_header = android [0]
android = android [1:]
## The Apple Store data set ###
opened_file = open ('AppleStore.csv')
read_file = reader (opened_file)
ios = list (read_file)
ios_header = ios [0]
ios = ios [1:]
To make it easier to explore the two data sets, we'll first write a function named explore_data() that we can use repeatedly to explore rows in a more readable way. We'll also add an option for our function to show the number of rows and columns for any data set.
def explore_data(dataset, start, end, rows_and_columns=False):
dataset_slice = dataset[start:end]
for row in dataset_slice:
print(row)
print('\n')
if rows_and_columns:
print('Number of rows:', len(dataset))
print ('Number of columns', len(dataset[0]))
print (android_header)
print ('\n')
explore_data(android, 0, 3, True)
['App', 'Category', 'Rating', 'Reviews', 'Size', 'Installs', 'Type', 'Price', 'Content Rating', 'Genres', 'Last Updated', 'Current Ver', 'Android Ver'] ['Photo Editor & Candy Camera & Grid & ScrapBook', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.1', '159', '19M', '10,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', 'Art & Design', 'January 7, 2018', '1.0.0', '4.0.3 and up'] ['Coloring book moana', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '3.9', '967', '14M', '500,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', 'Art & Design;Pretend Play', 'January 15, 2018', '2.0.0', '4.0.3 and up'] ['U Launcher Lite – FREE Live Cool Themes, Hide Apps', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.7', '87510', '8.7M', '5,000,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', 'Art & Design', 'August 1, 2018', '1.2.4', '4.0.3 and up'] Number of rows: 10841 Number of columns 13
We see that the Google Play data set has 10841 apps and 13 columns. At a quick glance, the columns that might be useful for the purpose of our analysis are 'App', 'Category', 'Reviews', 'Installs', 'Type', 'Price', and 'Genres'.
Now let's take a look at the App Store data set.
Deleting Wrong Data
The Google Play data set has a dedicated discussion section, and we can see that one of the discussions outlines an error for row 10472. Let's print this row and compare it against the header and another row that is correct.
print (android_header)
print ('\n')
print (android[10472])
print ('\n')
print (android [0])
['App', 'Category', 'Rating', 'Reviews', 'Size', 'Installs', 'Type', 'Price', 'Content Rating', 'Genres', 'Last Updated', 'Current Ver', 'Android Ver'] ['Life Made WI-Fi Touchscreen Photo Frame', '1.9', '19', '3.0M', '1,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', '', 'February 11, 2018', '1.0.19', '4.0 and up'] ['Photo Editor & Candy Camera & Grid & ScrapBook', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.1', '159', '19M', '10,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', 'Art & Design', 'January 7, 2018', '1.0.0', '4.0.3 and up']
print (len(android))
del android[10472]
print (len(android))
10841 10840
Removing Duplicate Entries
Part One
If we explore the Google Play data set long enough, we'll find that some apps have more than one entry. For instance, the application Instagram has four entries:
duplicate_apps=[]
unique_apps=[]
for apps in android:
name = apps [0]
if name in unique_apps:
duplicate_apps.append(name)
else:
unique_apps.append(name)
print ('Number of duplicate apps:', len(duplicate_apps))
print ('\n')
print ('Examples of duplicate apps:', duplicate_apps[:15])
Number of duplicate apps: 1181 Examples of duplicate apps: ['Quick PDF Scanner + OCR FREE', 'Box', 'Google My Business', 'ZOOM Cloud Meetings', 'join.me - Simple Meetings', 'Box', 'Zenefits', 'Google Ads', 'Google My Business', 'Slack', 'FreshBooks Classic', 'Insightly CRM', 'QuickBooks Accounting: Invoicing & Expenses', 'HipChat - Chat Built for Teams', 'Xero Accounting Software']
We don't want to count certain apps more than once when we analyze data, so we need to remove the duplicate entries and keep only one entry per app. One thing we could do is remove the duplicate rows randomly, but we could probably find a better way.
The different numbers in the fourth position of each row, which corresponds to the number of reviews show that the data was collected at different times. We can use this to build a criterion for keeping rows. We won't remove rows randomly, but rather we'll keep the rows that have the highest number of reviews because the higher the number of reviews, the more reliable the ratings.
To do that, we will:
Part Two
Let's start by building the dictionary.
reviews_max={}
for app in android:
name = app[0]
n_reviews = float(app[3])
if name in reviews_max and reviews_max[name]<n_reviews:
reviews_max[name]=n_reviews
elif name not in reviews_max:
reviews_max[name]=n_reviews
In a previous code cell, we found that there are 1,181 cases where an app occurs more than once, so the length of our dictionary (of unique apps) should be equal to the difference between the length of our data set and 1,181.
print('Expected length:', len(android) - 1181)
print('Actual length:', len(reviews_max))
Expected length: 9659 Actual length: 9659
Now, let's use the reviews_max dictionary to remove the duplicates. For the duplicate cases, we'll only keep the entries with the highest number of reviews. In the code cell below:
We start by initializing two empty lists, android_clean and already_added.
We loop through the android data set, and for every iteration:
We isolate the name of the app and the number of reviews.
We add the current row (app) to the android_clean list, and the app name (name) to the already_added list if:
android_clean=[]
already_added=[]
for app in android:
name = app [0]
n_reviews = float(app[3])
if (n_reviews == reviews_max[name]) and (name not in already_added):
android_clean.append(app)
already_added.append(name)
Now let's quickly explore the new data set, and confirm that the number of rows is 9,659.
explore_data(android_clean,0,3,True)
['Photo Editor & Candy Camera & Grid & ScrapBook', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.1', '159', '19M', '10,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', 'Art & Design', 'January 7, 2018', '1.0.0', '4.0.3 and up'] ['U Launcher Lite – FREE Live Cool Themes, Hide Apps', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.7', '87510', '8.7M', '5,000,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', 'Art & Design', 'August 1, 2018', '1.2.4', '4.0.3 and up'] ['Sketch - Draw & Paint', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.5', '215644', '25M', '50,000,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Teen', 'Art & Design', 'June 8, 2018', 'Varies with device', '4.2 and up'] Number of rows: 9659 Number of columns 13
Removing Non-English Apps
Part One
If you explore the data sets enough, you'll notice the names of some of the apps suggest they are not directed toward an English-speaking audience. We're not interested in keeping these kind of apps, so we'll remove them. One way to go about this is to remove each app whose name contains a symbol that is not commonly used in English text — English text usually includes letters from the English alphabet, numbers composed of digits from 0 to 9, punctuation marks (., !, ?, ;, etc.), and other symbols (+, *, /, etc.).
All these characters that are specific to English texts are encoded using the ASCII standard. Each ASCII character has a corresponding number between 0 and 127 associated with it, and we can take advantage of that to build a function that checks an app name and tells us whether it contains non-ASCII characters.
We built this function below, and we use the built-in ord() function to find out the corresponding encoding number of each character.
def is_english(string):
for character in string:
if ord(character) > 127:
return False
return True
print (is_english('Instagram'))
print (is_english('爱奇艺PPS -《欢乐颂2》电视剧热播'))
print (is_english('Docs To Go™ Free Office Suite'))
print (is_english('Instachat 😜'))
True False False False
The function seems to work fine, but some English app names use emojis or other symbols (™, — (em dash), – (en dash), etc.) that fall outside of the ASCII range. Because of this, we'll remove useful apps if we use the function in its current form.
Part Two
To minimize the impact of data loss, we'll only remove an app if its name has more than three non-ASCII characters:
def is_english(string):
non_acsii = 0
for character in string:
if ord(character) > 127:
non_acsii += 1
if non_acsii > 3:
return False
else:
return True
print (is_english('Docs To Go™ Free Office Suite'))
print (is_english('Instachat 😜'))
print (is_english('爱奇艺PPS -《欢乐颂2》电视剧热播'))
True True False
The function is still not perfect, and very few non-English apps might get past our filter, but this seems good enough at this point in our analysis — we shouldn't spend too much time on optimization at this point.
Below, we use the is_english() function to filter out the non-English apps for both data sets:
android_english=[]
ios_english=[]
for app in android_clean:
name = app[0]
if is_english(name):
android_english.append(app)
for app in ios:
name = app[1]
if is_english(name):
ios_english.append(app)
explore_data(android_english,0,3,True)
print ('\n')
explore_data(ios_english,0,3,True)
['Photo Editor & Candy Camera & Grid & ScrapBook', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.1', '159', '19M', '10,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', 'Art & Design', 'January 7, 2018', '1.0.0', '4.0.3 and up'] ['U Launcher Lite – FREE Live Cool Themes, Hide Apps', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.7', '87510', '8.7M', '5,000,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', 'Art & Design', 'August 1, 2018', '1.2.4', '4.0.3 and up'] ['Sketch - Draw & Paint', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.5', '215644', '25M', '50,000,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Teen', 'Art & Design', 'June 8, 2018', 'Varies with device', '4.2 and up'] Number of rows: 9614 Number of columns 13 ['284882215', 'Facebook', '389879808', 'USD', '0.0', '2974676', '212', '3.5', '3.5', '95.0', '4+', 'Social Networking', '37', '1', '29', '1'] ['389801252', 'Instagram', '113954816', 'USD', '0.0', '2161558', '1289', '4.5', '4.0', '10.23', '12+', 'Photo & Video', '37', '0', '29', '1'] ['529479190', 'Clash of Clans', '116476928', 'USD', '0.0', '2130805', '579', '4.5', '4.5', '9.24.12', '9+', 'Games', '38', '5', '18', '1'] Number of rows: 6183 Number of columns 16
We can see that we're left with 9614 Android apps and 6183 iOS apps.
Isolating the Free Apps
As we mentioned in the introduction, we only build apps that are free to download and install, and our main source of revenue consists of in-app ads. Our data sets contain both free and non-free apps, and we'll need to isolate only the free apps for our analysis. Below, we isolate the free apps for both our data sets.
android_final =[]
ios_final = []
for app in android_english:
price = app[7]
if price == '0':
android_final.append(app)
for app in ios_english:
price = app[4]
if price == '0.0':
ios_final.append(app)
explore_data(android_final,0,3,True)
print ('\n')
explore_data(ios_final,0,3,True)
['Photo Editor & Candy Camera & Grid & ScrapBook', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.1', '159', '19M', '10,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', 'Art & Design', 'January 7, 2018', '1.0.0', '4.0.3 and up'] ['U Launcher Lite – FREE Live Cool Themes, Hide Apps', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.7', '87510', '8.7M', '5,000,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Everyone', 'Art & Design', 'August 1, 2018', '1.2.4', '4.0.3 and up'] ['Sketch - Draw & Paint', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', '4.5', '215644', '25M', '50,000,000+', 'Free', '0', 'Teen', 'Art & Design', 'June 8, 2018', 'Varies with device', '4.2 and up'] Number of rows: 8864 Number of columns 13 ['284882215', 'Facebook', '389879808', 'USD', '0.0', '2974676', '212', '3.5', '3.5', '95.0', '4+', 'Social Networking', '37', '1', '29', '1'] ['389801252', 'Instagram', '113954816', 'USD', '0.0', '2161558', '1289', '4.5', '4.0', '10.23', '12+', 'Photo & Video', '37', '0', '29', '1'] ['529479190', 'Clash of Clans', '116476928', 'USD', '0.0', '2130805', '579', '4.5', '4.5', '9.24.12', '9+', 'Games', '38', '5', '18', '1'] Number of rows: 3222 Number of columns 16
We're left with 8864 Android apps and 3222 iOS apps, which should be enough for our analysis.
Most Common Apps by Genre
Part One
As we mentioned in the introduction, our aim is to determine the kinds of apps that are likely to attract more users because our revenue is highly influenced by the number of people using our apps.
To minimize risks and overhead, our validation strategy for an app idea is comprised of three steps:
Build a minimal Android version of the app, and add it to Google Play. If the app has a good response from users, we then develop it further. If the app is profitable after six months, we also build an iOS version of the app and add it to the App Store. Because our end goal is to add the app on both the App Store and Google Play, we need to find app profiles that are successful on both markets. For instance, a profile that might work well for both markets might be a productivity app that makes use of gamification.
Let's begin the analysis by getting a sense of the most common genres for each market. For this, we'll build a frequency table for the prime_genre column of the App Store data set, and the Genres and Category columns of the Google Play data set.
Part Two
We'll build two functions we can use to analyze the frequency tables:
One function to generate frequency tables that show percentages Another function that we can use to display the percentages in a descending order
def freq_table(dataset, index):
table={}
total=0
for row in dataset:
total+=1
value=row[index]
if value in table:
table[value]+=1
else:
table[value]=1
table_percentages={}
for key in table:
percentage = (table[key]/total)*100
table_percentages[key]=percentage
return table_percentages
def display_table(dataset, index):
table = freq_table(dataset, index)
table_display = []
for key in table:
key_val_as_tuple = (table[key], key)
table_display.append(key_val_as_tuple)
table_sorted = sorted(table_display, reverse = True)
for entry in table_sorted:
print(entry[1], ':', entry[0])
Part Three
We start by examining the frequency table for the prime_genre column of the App Store data set.
display_table(ios_final, 11)
Games : 58.16263190564867 Entertainment : 7.883302296710118 Photo & Video : 4.9658597144630665 Education : 3.662321539416512 Social Networking : 3.2898820608317814 Shopping : 2.60707635009311 Utilities : 2.5139664804469275 Sports : 2.1415270018621975 Music : 2.0484171322160147 Health & Fitness : 2.0173805090006205 Productivity : 1.7380509000620732 Lifestyle : 1.5828677839851024 News : 1.3345747982619491 Travel : 1.2414649286157666 Finance : 1.1173184357541899 Weather : 0.8690254500310366 Food & Drink : 0.8069522036002483 Reference : 0.5586592178770949 Business : 0.5276225946617008 Book : 0.4345127250155183 Navigation : 0.186219739292365 Medical : 0.186219739292365 Catalogs : 0.12414649286157665
We can see that among the free English apps, more than a half (58.16%) are games. Entertainment apps are close to 8%, followed by photo and video apps, which are close to 5%. Only 3.66% of the apps are designed for education, followed by social networking apps which amount for 3.29% of the apps in our data set.
The general impression is that App Store (at least the part containing free English apps) is dominated by apps that are designed for fun (games, entertainment, photo and video, social networking, sports, music, etc.), while apps with practical purposes (education, shopping, utilities, productivity, lifestyle, etc.) are more rare. However, the fact that fun apps are the most numerous doesn't also imply that they also have the greatest number of users — the demand might not be the same as the offer.
display_table (android_final,1)
FAMILY : 18.907942238267147 GAME : 9.724729241877256 TOOLS : 8.461191335740072 BUSINESS : 4.591606498194946 LIFESTYLE : 3.9034296028880866 PRODUCTIVITY : 3.892148014440433 FINANCE : 3.7003610108303246 MEDICAL : 3.531137184115524 SPORTS : 3.395758122743682 PERSONALIZATION : 3.3167870036101084 COMMUNICATION : 3.2378158844765346 HEALTH_AND_FITNESS : 3.0798736462093865 PHOTOGRAPHY : 2.944494584837545 NEWS_AND_MAGAZINES : 2.7978339350180503 SOCIAL : 2.6624548736462095 TRAVEL_AND_LOCAL : 2.33528880866426 SHOPPING : 2.2450361010830324 BOOKS_AND_REFERENCE : 2.1435018050541514 DATING : 1.861462093862816 VIDEO_PLAYERS : 1.7937725631768955 MAPS_AND_NAVIGATION : 1.3989169675090252 FOOD_AND_DRINK : 1.2409747292418771 EDUCATION : 1.1620036101083033 ENTERTAINMENT : 0.9589350180505415 LIBRARIES_AND_DEMO : 0.9363718411552346 AUTO_AND_VEHICLES : 0.9250902527075812 HOUSE_AND_HOME : 0.8235559566787004 WEATHER : 0.8009927797833934 EVENTS : 0.7107400722021661 PARENTING : 0.6543321299638989 ART_AND_DESIGN : 0.6430505415162455 COMICS : 0.6204873646209386 BEAUTY : 0.5979241877256317
The landscape seems significantly different on Google Play: there are not that many apps designed for fun, and it seems that a good number of apps are designed for practical purposes (family, tools, business, lifestyle, productivity, etc.). However, if we investigate this further, we can see that the family category (which accounts for almost 19% of the apps) means mostly games for kids. Even so, practical apps seem to have a better representation on Google Play compared to App Store.
display_table(android_final,9)
Tools : 8.449909747292418 Entertainment : 6.069494584837545 Education : 5.347472924187725 Business : 4.591606498194946 Productivity : 3.892148014440433 Lifestyle : 3.892148014440433 Finance : 3.7003610108303246 Medical : 3.531137184115524 Sports : 3.463447653429603 Personalization : 3.3167870036101084 Communication : 3.2378158844765346 Action : 3.1024368231046933 Health & Fitness : 3.0798736462093865 Photography : 2.944494584837545 News & Magazines : 2.7978339350180503 Social : 2.6624548736462095 Travel & Local : 2.3240072202166067 Shopping : 2.2450361010830324 Books & Reference : 2.1435018050541514 Simulation : 2.0419675090252705 Dating : 1.861462093862816 Arcade : 1.8501805054151623 Video Players & Editors : 1.7712093862815883 Casual : 1.7599277978339352 Maps & Navigation : 1.3989169675090252 Food & Drink : 1.2409747292418771 Puzzle : 1.128158844765343 Racing : 0.9927797833935018 Role Playing : 0.9363718411552346 Libraries & Demo : 0.9363718411552346 Auto & Vehicles : 0.9250902527075812 Strategy : 0.9138086642599278 House & Home : 0.8235559566787004 Weather : 0.8009927797833934 Events : 0.7107400722021661 Adventure : 0.6768953068592057 Comics : 0.6092057761732852 Beauty : 0.5979241877256317 Art & Design : 0.5979241877256317 Parenting : 0.4963898916967509 Card : 0.45126353790613716 Casino : 0.42870036101083037 Trivia : 0.41741877256317694 Educational;Education : 0.39485559566787 Board : 0.3835740072202166 Educational : 0.3722924187725632 Education;Education : 0.33844765342960287 Word : 0.2594765342960289 Casual;Pretend Play : 0.236913357400722 Music : 0.2030685920577617 Racing;Action & Adventure : 0.16922382671480143 Puzzle;Brain Games : 0.16922382671480143 Entertainment;Music & Video : 0.16922382671480143 Casual;Brain Games : 0.13537906137184114 Casual;Action & Adventure : 0.13537906137184114 Arcade;Action & Adventure : 0.12409747292418773 Action;Action & Adventure : 0.10153429602888085 Educational;Pretend Play : 0.09025270758122744 Simulation;Action & Adventure : 0.078971119133574 Parenting;Education : 0.078971119133574 Entertainment;Brain Games : 0.078971119133574 Board;Brain Games : 0.078971119133574 Parenting;Music & Video : 0.06768953068592057 Educational;Brain Games : 0.06768953068592057 Casual;Creativity : 0.06768953068592057 Art & Design;Creativity : 0.06768953068592057 Education;Pretend Play : 0.056407942238267145 Role Playing;Pretend Play : 0.04512635379061372 Education;Creativity : 0.04512635379061372 Role Playing;Action & Adventure : 0.033844765342960284 Puzzle;Action & Adventure : 0.033844765342960284 Entertainment;Creativity : 0.033844765342960284 Entertainment;Action & Adventure : 0.033844765342960284 Educational;Creativity : 0.033844765342960284 Educational;Action & Adventure : 0.033844765342960284 Education;Music & Video : 0.033844765342960284 Education;Brain Games : 0.033844765342960284 Education;Action & Adventure : 0.033844765342960284 Adventure;Action & Adventure : 0.033844765342960284 Video Players & Editors;Music & Video : 0.02256317689530686 Sports;Action & Adventure : 0.02256317689530686 Simulation;Pretend Play : 0.02256317689530686 Puzzle;Creativity : 0.02256317689530686 Music;Music & Video : 0.02256317689530686 Entertainment;Pretend Play : 0.02256317689530686 Casual;Education : 0.02256317689530686 Board;Action & Adventure : 0.02256317689530686 Video Players & Editors;Creativity : 0.01128158844765343 Trivia;Education : 0.01128158844765343 Travel & Local;Action & Adventure : 0.01128158844765343 Tools;Education : 0.01128158844765343 Strategy;Education : 0.01128158844765343 Strategy;Creativity : 0.01128158844765343 Strategy;Action & Adventure : 0.01128158844765343 Simulation;Education : 0.01128158844765343 Role Playing;Brain Games : 0.01128158844765343 Racing;Pretend Play : 0.01128158844765343 Puzzle;Education : 0.01128158844765343 Parenting;Brain Games : 0.01128158844765343 Music & Audio;Music & Video : 0.01128158844765343 Lifestyle;Pretend Play : 0.01128158844765343 Lifestyle;Education : 0.01128158844765343 Health & Fitness;Education : 0.01128158844765343 Health & Fitness;Action & Adventure : 0.01128158844765343 Entertainment;Education : 0.01128158844765343 Communication;Creativity : 0.01128158844765343 Comics;Creativity : 0.01128158844765343 Casual;Music & Video : 0.01128158844765343 Card;Action & Adventure : 0.01128158844765343 Books & Reference;Education : 0.01128158844765343 Art & Design;Pretend Play : 0.01128158844765343 Art & Design;Action & Adventure : 0.01128158844765343 Arcade;Pretend Play : 0.01128158844765343 Adventure;Education : 0.01128158844765343
The difference between the Genres and the Category columns is not crystal clear, but one thing we can notice is that the Genres column is much more granular (it has more categories). We're only looking for the bigger picture at the moment, so we'll only work with the Category column moving forward.
Up to this point, we found that the App Store is dominated by apps designed for fun, while Google Play shows a more balanced landscape of both practical and for-fun apps. Now we'd like to get an idea about the kind of apps that have most users.
Most Popular Apps by Genre on the App Store
One way to find out what genres are the most popular (have the most users) is to calculate the average number of installs for each app genre. For the Google Play data set, we can find this information in the Installs column, but for the App Store data set this information is missing. As a workaround, we'll take the total number of user ratings as a proxy, which we can find in the rating_count_tot app.
Below, we calculate the average number of user ratings per app genre on the App Store:
genres_ios=freq_table(ios_final, -5)
for genre in genres_ios:
total = 0
len_genre = 0
for app in ios_final:
genre_app = app[-5]
if genre_app == genre:
n_ratings = float(app[5])
total += n_ratings
len_genre +=1
avg_n_ratings = total / len_genre
print (genre, ':', avg_n_ratings)
Music : 57326.530303030304 Book : 39758.5 Shopping : 26919.690476190477 Entertainment : 14029.830708661417 Food & Drink : 33333.92307692308 Catalogs : 4004.0 Lifestyle : 16485.764705882353 Business : 7491.117647058823 News : 21248.023255813954 Weather : 52279.892857142855 Reference : 74942.11111111111 Finance : 31467.944444444445 Navigation : 86090.33333333333 Travel : 28243.8 Games : 22788.6696905016 Education : 7003.983050847458 Sports : 23008.898550724636 Health & Fitness : 23298.015384615384 Medical : 612.0 Photo & Video : 28441.54375 Productivity : 21028.410714285714 Utilities : 18684.456790123455 Social Networking : 71548.34905660378
On average, navigation apps have the highest number of user reviews, but this figure is heavily influenced by Waze and Google Maps, which have close to half a million user reviews together:
for app in ios_final:
if app[-5] == 'Navigation':
print (app[1],':',app[5])
Waze - GPS Navigation, Maps & Real-time Traffic : 345046 Google Maps - Navigation & Transit : 154911 Geocaching® : 12811 CoPilot GPS – Car Navigation & Offline Maps : 3582 ImmobilienScout24: Real Estate Search in Germany : 187 Railway Route Search : 5
The same pattern applies to social networking apps, where the average number is heavily influenced by a few giants like Facebook, Pinterest, Skype, etc. Same applies to music apps, where a few big players like Pandora, Spotify, and Shazam heavily influence the average number.
Our aim is to find popular genres, but navigation, social networking or music apps might seem more popular than they really are. The average number of ratings seem to be skewed by very few apps which have hundreds of thousands of user ratings, while the other apps may struggle to get past the 10,000 threshold.
display_table(android_final,5)
1,000,000+ : 15.726534296028879 100,000+ : 11.552346570397113 10,000,000+ : 10.548285198555957 10,000+ : 10.198555956678701 1,000+ : 8.393501805054152 100+ : 6.915613718411552 5,000,000+ : 6.825361010830325 500,000+ : 5.561823104693141 50,000+ : 4.7721119133574 5,000+ : 4.512635379061372 10+ : 3.5424187725631766 500+ : 3.2490974729241873 50,000,000+ : 2.3014440433213 100,000,000+ : 2.1322202166064983 50+ : 1.917870036101083 5+ : 0.78971119133574 1+ : 0.5076714801444043 500,000,000+ : 0.2707581227436823 1,000,000,000+ : 0.22563176895306858 0+ : 0.04512635379061372 0 : 0.01128158844765343
One problem with this data is that is not precise. For instance, we don't know whether an app with 100,000+ installs has 100,000 installs, 200,000, or 350,000. However, we don't need very precise data for our purposes — we only want to get an idea which app genres attract the most users, and we don't need perfect precision with respect to the number of users.
We're going to leave the numbers as they are, which means that we'll consider that an app with 100,000+ installs has 100,000 installs, and an app with 1,000,000+ installs has 1,000,000 installs, and so on.
To perform computations, however, we'll need to convert each install number to float — this means that we need to remove the commas and the plus characters, otherwise the conversion will fail and raise an error. We'll do this directly in the loop below, where we also compute the average number of installs for each genre (category).
categories_android = freq_table(android_final, 1)
for category in categories_android:
total = 0
len_category = 0
for app in android_final:
category_app = app [1]
if category_app == category:
n_installs = app [5]
n_installs = n_installs.replace('+','')
n_installs = n_installs.replace(',','')
total += float(n_installs)
len_category +=1
avg_n_installs = total / len_category
print (category, ':', avg_n_installs)
ENTERTAINMENT : 11640705.88235294 ART_AND_DESIGN : 1986335.0877192982 COMMUNICATION : 38456119.167247385 PRODUCTIVITY : 16787331.344927534 VIDEO_PLAYERS : 24727872.452830188 PERSONALIZATION : 5201482.6122448975 SPORTS : 3638640.1428571427 HEALTH_AND_FITNESS : 4188821.9853479853 DATING : 854028.8303030303 SHOPPING : 7036877.311557789 FAMILY : 3695641.8198090694 AUTO_AND_VEHICLES : 647317.8170731707 FOOD_AND_DRINK : 1924897.7363636363 EDUCATION : 1833495.145631068 BEAUTY : 513151.88679245283 PHOTOGRAPHY : 17840110.40229885 BOOKS_AND_REFERENCE : 8767811.894736841 SOCIAL : 23253652.127118643 TRAVEL_AND_LOCAL : 13984077.710144928 BUSINESS : 1712290.1474201474 GAME : 15588015.603248259 WEATHER : 5074486.197183099 EVENTS : 253542.22222222222 FINANCE : 1387692.475609756 HOUSE_AND_HOME : 1331540.5616438356 LIFESTYLE : 1437816.2687861272 MEDICAL : 120550.61980830671 MAPS_AND_NAVIGATION : 4056941.7741935486 TOOLS : 10801391.298666667 COMICS : 817657.2727272727 PARENTING : 542603.6206896552 LIBRARIES_AND_DEMO : 638503.734939759 NEWS_AND_MAGAZINES : 9549178.467741935
On average, communication apps have the most installs: 38,456,119. This number is heavily skewed up by a few apps that have over one billion installs (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Google Chrome, Gmail, and Hangouts), and a few others with over 100 and 500 million installs:
for app in android_final:
if app[1] == 'COMMUNICATION' and (app[5] == '1,000,000,000+'
or app[5] == '500,000,000+'
or app[5] == '100,000,000+'):
print(app[0], ':', app[5])
WhatsApp Messenger : 1,000,000,000+ imo beta free calls and text : 100,000,000+ Android Messages : 100,000,000+ Google Duo - High Quality Video Calls : 500,000,000+ Messenger – Text and Video Chat for Free : 1,000,000,000+ imo free video calls and chat : 500,000,000+ Skype - free IM & video calls : 1,000,000,000+ Who : 100,000,000+ GO SMS Pro - Messenger, Free Themes, Emoji : 100,000,000+ LINE: Free Calls & Messages : 500,000,000+ Google Chrome: Fast & Secure : 1,000,000,000+ Firefox Browser fast & private : 100,000,000+ UC Browser - Fast Download Private & Secure : 500,000,000+ Gmail : 1,000,000,000+ Hangouts : 1,000,000,000+ Messenger Lite: Free Calls & Messages : 100,000,000+ Kik : 100,000,000+ KakaoTalk: Free Calls & Text : 100,000,000+ Opera Mini - fast web browser : 100,000,000+ Opera Browser: Fast and Secure : 100,000,000+ Telegram : 100,000,000+ Truecaller: Caller ID, SMS spam blocking & Dialer : 100,000,000+ UC Browser Mini -Tiny Fast Private & Secure : 100,000,000+ Viber Messenger : 500,000,000+ WeChat : 100,000,000+ Yahoo Mail – Stay Organized : 100,000,000+ BBM - Free Calls & Messages : 100,000,000+
Conclusions
In this project, we analyzed data about the App Store and Google Play mobile apps with the goal of recommending an app profile that can be profitable for both markets.
We concluded that Navigation apps are popular for the Apple Store while Communication apps are popular for the Google Play Store. Recommendation is to develop apps for either Navigation or Communication Apps to be promoted in Apple Store and Google Play Store respectively.