My Experience in the Educational Apps Market – 2013 report

[altcognito]

Hey Pierre,

Thank you for this post. First, because I use your apps with my kids and they love them. Almost certainly one of the reasons your applications sell is because they are very good. It was recommended to me by a relative who is a teacher and I know she recommends it to others. These types of applications are the reason I purchased a tablet device: I am a very stingy person, but if a tool will engage my children in learning, I am happy to separate with my cash. (we use the app with our kids together)

Second of all, it is just good to have this perspective on the market potential for a well made app. I'm disappointed about the Android market, I hope it improves.

[jcampbell1]

> I'm disappointed about the Android market, I hope it improves.

Based on some research that I have done, iOS revenue is about 2:1 for phone apps, with the gap closing quickly. If the app has strong international appeal, it is probably closer to parity. For tablet apps, iOS has something like a 10:1 revenue advantage.

I wouldn't write off Android if the app is designed to be used on phones, but for tablet apps, it is currently a waste of time for most indie devs.

That being said, this type of software is completely evergreen. You can't reach saturation because there are always new kids and new parents searching for apps. It is conceivable you could launch an Android app, make $10k this year, but then the app earns $100k five years from now.

The bigger problem is other devs poisoning the well with high quality free apps. Which is why I believe this type of post is a mistake if maximizing income is your priority. This type of post is an invitation for talentless hacks to hire people from elance to clone your app. All it takes is someone to figure out how to game the app store rankings better than you. I could probably pay $40k to clone an app, with the twist that modules are unlocked if you rate the app, and then out rank Pierre's apps.

[PierreA]

Thanks ! Yes it's not a secret that the best way to market app is word of mouth but the issue is really to get a large user base so that it works. Happy to read that you play with your kids with my apps - I'm always thinking about that when I do an app because it is very important for me.

[mathattack]

Almost certainly one of the reasons your applications sell is because they are very good.

This is HUGE for the educational market. With all the word of mouth that goes on, it's important to do something good. All the tweaking of pricing and viral strategies doesn't help if the core app isn't good.

Thank you for the GOOD software Pierre.

[coob]

Hi Pierre, competitor here :) As to your query about

Perhaps a good alternative is to create two apps: one free with IAP and one paid (but I don't know if Apple is still OK with this).

We do this with our primary education maths apps[1], one version unlocked fully and paid (marketed as 'for schools') and one with a certain amount of content free and more unlock able with IAP. Apple have not had a problem with this.

[1] http://eurotalk.com/apps/en/age3-5/maths/

[PierreA]

yes it is still an open question for me. There are many big brands that don't do this - why ? I think everybody is experimenting in kids'app world - it's not clear as in games where (consumable) IAP are very profitable.

[epaga]

Wow, thank you SO much for sharing these numbers. It seems to me a huge part of your success was due to you picking a niche (Montessori) with weak(ish) competition and making a high-quality product in that niche, would you agree with that assessment?

[PierreA]

I think my luck is that I was here at the beginning of the /marketiPad. I was not thinking the market would grow so much. Using the Montessori name was not a big marketing plan actually (I was really dumb about marketing 3 years ago - just check the name of my company, it is really not good - especially for the US Market!). It was just because the concept was coming from a Montessori activites my homeschooled daughter was doing... Some people told me that it was a very good marketing to have used the Montessori name, and now I agree but at this time I didn't know that. My second app and 3rd app has no "Montessori" in the title because I don't want to use this name too much (perhaps I should because my work is always inspired by Montessori methods we use at home...) Anyway, picking a niche and sticking to it is definitively something important and that worked well for me. All my apps are in this niche. As a final note: when I release my first, there was almost no competition. The market was empty.

[PierreA]

Let me know if you have questions (I'm the lucky indie dev who wrote the post)

[tonyedgecombe]

Aren't you afraid that by posting this you are going to attract a lot of unwelcome competition?

[pcharles]

Would you recommend a technical person to create the apps (design & coding) themselves or outsource it? You're giving up a little bit of control but you may be able to get more done faster Thoughts??

[slashedzero]

Two of your apps mention Montessori by name, which makes me wonder how often you are criticized for using her name in vain?

My wife is a Montessori teacher and would flip her shit if a parent ever substituted the real montessori numbers/letters (usually sand paper letters) for an app. Montessori would've surely been incredibly against an app for children young enough to learn anything from sand paper letters.

[ClayM]

No questions - but a thank you, as I'm one of the people who has given you money.

Your apps, if nothing else, are an excellent way to distract our kid if we go out for dinner :)

[malloreon]

What's the breakdown in iOS versions you have to support? I imagine educational buyers probably aren't picking up the latest and greatest hardware.

[NDizzle]

I just want to give you a nod of appreciation. It takes a lot to put yourself out there like this consistently. Thanks.

[wil421]

Nice this is awesome I dabbled in iOS dev one summer but my simple apps looked horrible. If you can find something that targets children the parents will buy. When I worked in a restaurant you wont believe how many parents would just give the kid an iPad/iPhone so they would calm down, worked immediately.

Kudos for making an app that actually has the kids learning instead of some trippy cartoon to watch.

2.99 is a good price to pay for a decent app any more and I probably would look for something else, the days of .99 across the board are long gone.

[scrrr]

Seems like bad/lazy parenting, but hey.. good for our industry.

[kohanz]

Are those revenue numbers before or after Apple takes their cut? Either way, it's very impressive, but at one point the $1M is listed as "sales" and another it is labelled "profit".

[PierreA]

yes it is after Apple cut. Sorry for my bad english - I should use profit I believe. I've got a little bit of expense but not much since I work alone and from home. I just have some royalties to give back to a text to speech engine for one of my app (I think it is around 30/40K for all my expense for 2013)

[bonzq]

PierreA, jcampbell1 said you are immensely talented and he meant the app you created. I agree with that but there is one more thing to that, and that is the way you use English. I suppose English is your second language (so is mine) but how clearly you express yourself and what a pleasure it is to read your blog confirms that you're a super talented guy.

[PierreA]

Thanks ! According to my wife who is english to french translator - which helps me a lot to check my writing - my english is not so good ;-) But I believe it is enough to explain clearly what I want to say

[kubiiii]

Great find, I will try out your apps with my daughter. Congratulations on your success. Escpacially since I never saw theses apps promoted on the app store. Bonne continuation.

[PierreA]

all my apps were promoted on the app store (thanks Apple to help some indie!) but apps doesn't stay for long featured (competition!)

[tsuriyathep]

Hi Pierre, thanks for your new inspirational article and your previous one. I have 3 kids and attempted the educational apps market 2 years ago, I didn't have nearly as much success as you. My games are not pure education either, so maybe that's my issue, but they are more educational than my competitors. Do you have any specific advice for my situation? Congrats to you!

http://www.littlefivegames.com

[PierreA]

kid's game market (not "purely" educational) is more competitive, and you have to fight with big players like toca boca/disney/nickelodeon. So you have to innovate even more. I've seen great apps disapearing from the charts in 2 weeks. Did you try free with not consumable IAP ? Did you try to work on your keywords ?

[aliirz]

This further proves the lack of decent apps in the educational market. I am glad this worked out well for your PierreA, congratulations.

[PierreA]

thanks - but I don't think it is the case anymore. There are indie,big publishers, funded startups that are doing great stuff (some have based their business model on my previous reports!!). As I've said, when the iPad was released nobody thought that the iPad could be useful for education and that there will be iPads in a lot of schools...

[callmeed]

Pierre, thanks for the great post. I have one question for you:

I've heard that the download:rating ratio for iOS apps is around 30:1 and you can, therefore, estimate an app's downloads by multiplying ratings by 30. Do you have any thoughts on this?

You seem to have a higher ratio based on your numbers and the ratings in the app store.

Thanks again.

[josephlord]

I think the ratio for at least free apps that don't pop up a request to review the app is MUCH higher. It is at least for my small scale app.

I don't have any fake reviews (although there might be two or three from friends and family) and while I don't have metrics for the number in active use the number of updates downloaded on a recent update was 130 times the number of reviews I have and the total number of downloads is well over 400 times the review count.

Review counts and download numbers global. A user generally only sees the reviews in their own country's app store I think.

I really don't want to do it to the user experience but I might have add a pop up requesting rating when a user has used the app enough, I've only had a couple of reviews in the past few months.

[PierreA]

I've never heard about this. Some apps have a lot of "fake" 5-stars rating and are not performing very well...

[sivetic]

A local school recently voted to introduce iPads into schools. Immediately following the vote, there was a huge backlash from the parents about why the school thought it was a great idea to give a platform for messaging and gaming to their kids.

I wish more parents and educators actually understood the benefit and potential of computers in classrooms. Thank you for helping the cause in a huge way!

[PierreA]

The issue in schools is that older kids are smarter that the teachers and can fool them to do what they want on the iPad Or simply they can the hack the device to do what they want - there was a big story in LA schools about this - but I believe it is learning as well no ? I remember I learnt a lot about security and Unix when I was hacking the network of my university 20 years ago :-)

[DennisP]

A school system in my area did it and got a lot more support, but had to stop for now because the kids broke so many of the iPads.

[ommunist]

Thank you for the post, Pierre. It is very rare such figures appear for to be viewed by average Joe. As one can see the consumer market is very much biased towards the US. Is it because of marketing or because EU markets are so small? Is Russia relevant as an app market?

[PierreA]

If you put all EU markets together I think you've got something as big as the US (although one would need some figures to prove that). Now the issue is that you need to market in each country and in a different language. In addition, it is very complex to localize an if you do a literacy app - language, culture, way of learning, testing with teacher, etc... I don't know the size of the Russia market but I think it is the 10th if I remember well just after France (also to check on reports like Distimo's)

[randomhero]

which text to speech engine did you used? or is it your own?

[PierreA]

it's Acapela. it's impossible to build your own text to speech engine if you want quality - it's years of R&D to have a very good one.

[apierre]

Félicitations! Funny we almost have the same username here :)