Over 1.5 million devices using pirated iPhone apps
updated 01:45 pm EDT, Wed October 14, 2009
Most pirates located outside of US
Piracy is a minor but still important problem for iPhone app developers, says analytics firm Pinch Media. The company notes that shortly after the launch of the App Store in 2008, it began receiving complaints that Pinch tallies of new users were exceeding official figures displayed by iTunes Connect. The discrepancy is now believed to be attributable to piracy, tracked by Pinch since May of 2009.
Of the iPhones and iPod touches tracked by Pinch's systems, some 4 million are currently said to be jailbroken. Jailbreaking is a necessary step before using an unsanctioned app; only 38 percent of hacked devices -- roughly 1.5 million -- are known to have used a pirated app however, a comparative minority. Real piracy is believed to be somewhat higher, mainly due to pirate efforts at evading detection.
Regionally the largest ratio of pirated apps, over 37 percent, is said to be found in China. Almost 25 percent of Russian apps are pirated, and in Brazil the figure is approximately 22 percent. Japan, Great Britain and the US are said to exhibit the smallest piracy rates, no higher than 5 percent and closer to 3 percent in Japan. Piracy is believed to be roughly correlated to the poverty of a country, as rates are higher in countries with lower per capita gross domestic product.
Over 60 percent of paid apps are said to have been pirated at one point, and once cracked, an average 34 percent of a title's installs are thought to be illegal. Pirated copies are disposed of faster than paid counterparts though, seeing high usage for the first two or three weeks after release, only to dwindle into "low but significant" activity for the remainder their lives. They are also used less often as a rule, and for a shorter period of time.
Reasons may be connected to bulk installations, and a higher likelihood of crashes. Few pirates are said to be interested in testing apps before buying them; while the conversion rate for legitimate trial apps is 7.4 percent, illegal apps generate a conversion of just 0.43 percent.
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Joined: Oct 2004
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It's true that pirates don't often convert to paid customers, but then again, they are just randomly trying apps, because for them its free.
The idea that this person would have been a paying customer is absurd. Even a trial app person only converts to paying at rate of less than 10%...this article says 7% my guess is closer to 2%.
in other words if you could eliminate piracy via copy protection mechanisms that are uhackable, these pirates would certainly be converted into trial customers instead, but they would be only slightly more likely to purchase the app, than they were before.
Because, finally one article got it right, they don't have money to buy the apps, and it cannot be wished from nowhere.
No examination of the actual facts, should be construed as an endorsement of piracy.
Piracy is wrong, and should be eliminated by better copy protection mechanisms, which are getting better every day.
But, there should be no fantasy about it, the reason companies don't spend millions perfecting copy protection, is because they well know it isn't going to cause a boom in sales.