Chomp

Exciting Consumer Trends in App Search

Over 1 billion apps are being downloaded each month and the number of available Android and iOS apps has surged to almost 1 million. As more and more apps become available, we realize that it becomes harder for you to find what you need.  That’s why we created the Chomp app search engine and why we’re constantly working to bring you the best search results. Our monthly search analytics help us to identify the apps that are most important to you. Here’s a summary of July’s highlights:

• Movie, book, game and productivity app searches are the most popular on the Android and Apple platforms.  Games dominated in search requests on both platforms; however games lost overall search share on the Android platform while book searches realized a sizeable uptick.  

• Paid apps are still on the rise This is the third consecutive month there has been an increase in paid app downloads. They increased by 2% over the last month on both Android and iOS.

• Queries for movies spiked during key blockbuster release dates demonstrating a strong correlation between app searches and movie title releases.  The summer’s most popular titles (in order of search volume) were Cars 2, Transformers and The Green Lantern. 

• The top Android search queries were “free,” “games,” “entertainment,” “utilities,” and “music.”  The top five Android app searches were for Dropbox, WeatherBug, Flash Player 10.3, Spotify, and eBay.  The top iOS queries were “games,” “adventure games,” “entertainment,” “puzzle games,” and “utilities.” 

• The top iOS app searches were for Tweetbot, Cut The Rope, Instagram, IMDb Movies & TV and Spotify.  Spotify searches surged 250% around the U.S. launch.  Check out the Chomp 55 to see all of the top app searches. 

Chomp Charts July

Keep an eye out for out next report in mid-September.  When you search, we listen.

Ben Keighran
CEO & Co-Founder

Renowned Scientists Become Advisors To Chomp

When we started Chomp two years ago, Ben and I made a vow to develop app search technology that was ground-breaking and powerful. At the same time, we realized that to make the best app search, we’d need to make all of the science behind the app invisible to you, our users. It’s been a delicate balance, but one that we’ve stayed true to. But staying innovative isn’t a static process. We have to continue to push ourselves and the boundaries of search. To that end, I’m excited to announce that we’ve added two prominent scientists to the Chomp team as technology advisors – Dr. David Blei, a Princeton University assistant professor and machine learning expert, and Dr. Don Metzler, a USC assistant research professor, Information Sciences Institute computer scientist and information retrieval expert. They will work directly with me and the Chomp team of PhDs and scientists from Berkeley, MIT and Google.

Dr. Blei brings a deep technical and research background in the areas of topic modeling and machine learning. He was one of the original developers of Latent Dirichlet Allocation, the current state-of-the-art topic modeling algorithm. Dr. Blei’s award-winning research has been honored by Microsoft, Google, U.C. Berkeley (where he completed his PhD), the National Science Foundation and Princeton University.

Dr. Metzler is a respected expert in theoretical and practical information retrieval. He is currently a research assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and a computer scientist in the Natural Language Group of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at USC. He has served as a search and computational advertising scientist at Yahoo! Research and held a research position at Microsoft in the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group. He is the author of Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice. We’re honored to have them join us!

Cathy Edwards
CTO & Co-Founder

Chomp Featured at Verizon App Innovation Center

Yesterday was the official opening of the Verizon Application Innovation Center here in San Francisco. The event was all about delivering the best possible user experience to Verizon customers and Chomp was selected by Verizon to represent a model partnership.  There was a lot of buzz about everything happening at the center. 

Chomp and Verizon have worked together to bring Verizon’s custom catalog of applications into the Chomp app search engine.  Now it’s easier than ever for Verizon users to search VCast and other stores to find just the right app at the best price.  Getting there has been fun.  When it comes to innovation, Verizon is more like a fast moving, inventive start up than a large corporation.

It’s a transformational time as we move from a PC-focused world to the App driven experience.  Everyone on a mobile device wants to build their own personal app collection and click on an icon for instant gratification.  The good news is that there are more apps than ever before.  There’s some great stuff out there.  The challenge is that it’s hard to find the perfect app for what you want to do.  Web search isn’t built for app search. Gone are the days where we want to open a browser on our phone and undertake a long search for just the right app.  App search is what Chomp is singularly focused on and where we shine.  And it’s why Verizon chose us as the best search engine for their app catalog.

Check out these articles that have been written about the event

http://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2011/08/Mobile-Content-Verizon-Apps-Innovation-Center-Mobile-Applications/

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/10/verizon-opens-application-innovation-center-in-san-francisco-we/

Check my video interview from Verizon here.

http://br.thenewsmarket.com/VerizonWireless/br/Login/Landing.aspx

There’s also more exciting news coming from our partnership with Verizon. Stay tuned because those of you on Verizon mobile devices will be the big winners!

Ben Keighran
CEO & Co-Founder

 

Our CEO Ben Keighran speaking at the event