63 Million Players iOS, 5 Million Games Downloaded Per Day

Market research outfit Distimo recently signed a data sharing partnership with data analytics firm Newzoo, and in their first report together this week report that The National Gamers Survey, conducted in March 2011, revealed that there are now appropriately 63 Million iOS gamers out there, which are currently pegged at downloading an estimated 5 Million games collectively.

The report found that, (unsuprisingly), games were considered the most popular genre of app among iOS users, now accounting for almost half of all paid and free titles currently available on the iTunes App Store. Most interestingly though was the fact that across both the U.S and the six other major European countries, the daily download rate per user works out at 2.5 apps.

Now that doesn’t sound a lot on face value, but considering we’re talking about 63 Million gamers here, that download rate is quite impressive. In fact, based on Distimo’s numbers, we can assume that Apple’s army of U.S and European iTunes account, credit card-holding users are, collectively, downloading approximately157,500,000 apps (of all genres) per day. Yes, One-Hundred-And-Fifty-Seven-Million.

Alongside releasing data on the amount of users and app downloads the App Store was seeing as of March, Distimo and Newzoo’s report also highlighted that in-app purchases are becoming the preferred method of monetisation for developers offering FREE apps.

“Offering gamers the opportunity to spend money in-game is becoming a must-have feature for game developers,” the report states.

“While some 88 percent of downloaded top 300 iOS games are now offered for free, in-game purchases – within both free and paid games – generated approximately two-fifth of total revenues.”