As the number of apps available increases, developers are beginning to offer apps targeting specific countries or regional groups, localised in a number of ways including by language. And this is having an effect on numbers – in Apple’s App Store for iPhone, more than one quarter (27 percent) of the most popular apps are popular exclusively in one country, according to the latest survey by Distimo.
Nokia leads the way for localised content
Nokia’s Ovi Store has the highest proportion of titles published in just one country – at 29.4 percent of the total. The research firm described this as “surprisingly large.”
This company’s roster of country-specific content is dominated by products for two markets: Italy and China. The strength in the former comes from publishers 3 and Dada, although much of their portfolios is made up of ringtones and wallpapers. Together, they publish more than 8,000 products, accounting for nearly 9 percent of the total Ovi catalogue.
In China, the fact that games can only be published through “licensed aggregators” KongZhong and Tom Online, with videos only available through CNR, mean that these companies have a significant presence in the market.
For other stores, the distribution of locally published apps is "strikingly similar." The four countries with the most locally published content – US, UK, South Korea and Japan – perform similarly across the App Stores for iPhone and iPad, and Android Market.
The availability of locally published apps does not necessarily make a significant impact on the most popular products in a market, however.
The number of local apps in the top 100 listings is “not very different” for the Ovi Store than its rivals, despite the discrepencies in content availability.
Regional variations and groups
The US is the country with the most exclusively published apps: the total number of apps published in the App Store for iPhone in the US alone is 7,158. But the most popular applications in the US are “highly similar” to other countries: only 19 percent of the most popular apps are popular in this country only.
Content differentiation is most important in Asia: 67 percent of the most popular applications in the App Store for iPhone in Japan are popular in that country only. Similar is true of China, where 56 percent of the most popular apps are popular only in that country.
There are also blocks of countries that share a high number of overlapping top apps. These blocks are within the same region or share the same primary language in most cases.
One example is the US, UK, Australia and Canada (grouped by language): these countries have an average overlap of top applications of 54 percent, compared to a storewide average of only 33 percent. Other blocks include Mexico and Argentina (60 percent overlap), Belgium, the Netherlands and France (51 percent), and Germany, Austria and Switzerland (57 percent).
Unsurprisingly, Apple’s App Store has the least overlap between the US and Japan and China.