Being Category #1 in Regional AppStore

So this happened. On 14th of Septemeber, twenty days after its launch Transit made it to the number one in the Travel category in Austrian AppStore.

After staying there for three days, we want to say something in the vein of Joel Rosenberg (the author of Blocked): “don’t quit your day job to earn your living on the AppStore income”.

Regional AppStores have inherent property of being limited by targeting the relatively small market, but what are the sales figures for the AppStore categry-topping application in the rich Alpine state exactly? Not overwhelming.

We have entered the Travel’s Top 25 on day one, immediately after all of our friends bought Transit. The application then routinely made its way up, showing some tens of sales a day in the region. Being on the top just stabilized this picture. We learned that some markets are interconnected: being on top, we got a significant increase in sales in Germany, but haven’t topped there (go, Germany, go!) — yet.

Transit by its nature is not a pure regional application like, for example Benzin. It topped the Austrian category by just being exposed better in this country. Transit expands its geography with every release, now covering ten cities across the world. Berliners, Parisians, Londoners, New Yorkers, Torontonians, Singaporeans, Praguers, Barcelonians, Viennese, and Romans, as well as their guests could rely on Transit daily. Some of those cities do have a competing application (we’re looking at you, Tube Deluxe), some have not (like Prague), some represent the big market (like New York), some are not, but every new release up to now has increased the global sales. The experience with Austrian AppStore holds us in the confidence that global reach is essential feature for the success of the application.