South Korea came in third place in the world in terms of the number of downloads of free apps from the App Store, pushing the UK into fourth place. The USA and China are in first and second place.
.jpg)
The situation with Korea is quite specific, because the population of this country is much smaller compared to other leaders. It turns out that the number of downloads per capita there is much higher than in other countries. And this is despite the fact that the iPhone entered the Korean market only at the end of 2009. In the first 9 months, the first million devices were sold, and by May of this year, 2.5 million had already been sold.
Another interesting point: in all countries where the iPhone is sold, the “Games” category is the leader in the number of downloads, and Korea has reached 1 million downloads per day without its participation. The fact is that in Korea, according to local law, all game content must be approved by a special Game Rating Board commission. In this regard, Apple and Google have simply removed this category from their online stores.
Another feature is the ratio between free and paid applications. Although the total number of downloads in Korea has grown significantly recently, mostly free apps have played a role in this. The share of paid apps here is still much lower than in Europe and the USA. This trend applies to the whole of Asia. In addition, local game publishers are still leading in the Top 300 applications: we can conclude that localization is the key to conquering this market.