Ugh. This post is flawed. I've been in contact with him all afternoon trying to explain why (I wrote the original post he is attempting to debunk).
Under his 'Paid Apps' banner he is counting applications that use in-app purchases (but are initially free) and that offer free demo periods.
He doesn't know how many of those users are actually paying for items within the applications using in-app purchases, and he doesn't know how many people are paying once their demo expires.
I did my homework on this one. I looked at the 'Paid Apps' section listed on the official Chrome Web Store. When I noticed how low the running weekly download count was, I contacted Google and asked what was up. They said that the 'Top Paid' section on their store was not listed in order (no idea why), but even when I browsed through all of the 'Top Paid' applications, the one with the most downloads still wasn't doing very well.
The problem is, by the site's own admission, the number of apps has doubled (see their previous post) Meaning the per app sales of the store are half of what they were. So while the numbers aren't as bleak as we thought they aren't great either.
This seems an odd way to analyze the impact of user growth given that sales distribution in app stores is so non-linear.
It would seem safe to presume that the growth in paid users will result in stronger sales for the predominant apps – versus them being spread out over the whole inventory.
Also, paid apps counts apps with in-app payments, so if, for example, you demo MOG, that counts as a paid app as far as I can tell (correct me if I'm wrong)
Under his 'Paid Apps' banner he is counting applications that use in-app purchases (but are initially free) and that offer free demo periods.
He doesn't know how many of those users are actually paying for items within the applications using in-app purchases, and he doesn't know how many people are paying once their demo expires.
I did my homework on this one. I looked at the 'Paid Apps' section listed on the official Chrome Web Store. When I noticed how low the running weekly download count was, I contacted Google and asked what was up. They said that the 'Top Paid' section on their store was not listed in order (no idea why), but even when I browsed through all of the 'Top Paid' applications, the one with the most downloads still wasn't doing very well.