Unsurprisingly, the most most popular apps are Messaging, Voice and Social Networking. And remember: LBS has high potential to shift right.

* App Store refers to app store of all major smartphone platform, not just Apple’s

App Store reviews play a very important role in a customer’s decision to download an app.

As such, it is very common for the developers to write “reviews” for themselves.

I was prompted to write this article when @mugunthkumar mentioned “the reviews looked like insider job”.

I took a look and is very sure it is fake reviews, generated by Singtel Idea Factory.

These are the characteristics of fake reviews that you will be able to identify with WheresApp SG:

• All ratings are 5 stars
• Number of reviews = number of ratings
• Reviews all on the same date and close to release date
• Suspicion reviews voted helpful
• Overdose of exclamation marks
• Same writing style eg. First letter uppercase, title style
• Mentioning functions similar to app description
• Reviewers have only reviewed that 1 app in their lifetime
• Reviewers gave a lousy 1 star review to competitor’s app

With those pointers in mind, you know not to trust the review when you encounter one. And not waste that $1.99.

All 5 stars, reviewed on same day (with no further reviews), lots of !!, title styles with “app”.

Reviewer only reviewed 1 app.

Reviewed gave M1’s My Movies (competitor to Singtel) a 1 star app (when the app averages 3.5 stars).

Disclaimer: As a developer myself, I admit I have written my own “reviews”, but mildly, and smartly.

txeet was released on 9 Feb 2010.

Shortly after releasing, I checked on App Store ranking and my analytic data, and I see signs that Apple’s App Store is getting too crowded.

Sign 1 – Apps cluttered in the categories, especially in Lifestyle

In just a single day, there are 18 lifestyle apps released. These apps are ordered in alphabetical order, therefore txeet is placed quite behind, in fact it is in page 2.

To have a newly released app in page 2 is a big disappointment. One year ago, it could take 3 days before a new app gets pushed to page 2. Those were the days..

Note that page 1 has 5 charm apps (similar apps with combination of color and types…). The developer probably gonna release another 100+ apps as there are so many colors..

Page 2 has quite a lot of Girls apps, the latest trend. On first look, txeet looks bright and very out of place.

Sign 2 – Analytics show that Android has more users

I used Flurry analytics to analyze the number of new users for the first few days of launch.

Android was released on Oct 18th, and the first day it gathered 620 new users.

iPhone was released on Feb 9th, and the first full day it gathered 147 new users.

This post will be updated when I have updated data.