How to name your lite iPhone app

Inspired by an ariticle Charles Teague wrote about the increase of "Lite" applications, I took his data and analysed the popularity of free iPhone apps. Here is what I've found:

Popularity of free apps

I basically calculated the mean popularity using some filter options. The popularity of all iPhone apps serves as a base, indicated by the red line. It seems that free applications that use the word "Lite" in their name are slightly less popular in contrast to applications that use "Free" in their app name. Assuming that the popularity indicator has something to do with the number of downloads, it would be better to add "Free" instead of "Lite" to your demo/lite app. This would double the downloads. However one could argue that "free" in your app name is signaling that it's a full features app, instead of a cut-down version of a commercial application.

February 18th, 2009 • Permalink