In nearly 6 months since its launch, the iMessage App Store has seen a rise to stardom and then a reversal of fortune. New data from market analytics company SensorTower throws some light on this very interesting trend.
The report says that the iMessage App Store experienced a rise for the first few months, however, developers seem to be losing interest now.
“So far, nearly 5,000 apps have either added or launched with iMessage compatibility according to our App Intelligence data—a figure that equals the number of iOS apps released during the first year of the App Store back in 2008. But while the number of apps released for iOS continued to grow over time, we’re already seeing signs that the initial rush of excitement over iMessage apps is fading among developers.”
The effect is clear from a slowing down of the number of apps being added to the iMessage App Store over the past couple of months.
As can be seen, the growth started slowing down after December last year.
“By December, the month-over-month growth rate had slowed to 65 percent, with slightly more than 3,700 iMessage enabled apps available worldwide.”
The data further went on to reveal that the largest number of iMessage enabled apps turned out to be Games, followed by Entertainment. This was a shock to many analysts as the predictions were that Social Media apps would be the largest users of iMessage App Store. However, Social Media sits at a measly fourth place, with less than 7% of the share of Apps.
The report concludes by saying that Apple will have to do something soon to reverse this trend of dropping interest from the developers. Otherwise the future of iMessage App Store might be in danger.