The App Store is the largest virtual application store in the world, it hosts over 700.000 applications and is constantly growing. Analyzing the way in which applications evolve in the App Store, those from ABI Research found out that the average size of an App Store application increased by 16% in the last 6 months, with the games category registering the largest increase, of 42%. The raising of the limit regarding the size of the applications that can be downloaded through a data connection also contributed to this growth, as well as the launch of the iPad 3 with Retina Display, a screen that requires graphic elements with double the resolution compared to those used until that moment.
The iPad 3's Retina display and Apple's more liberal submission policy have caused the file sizes of leading iOS apps to grow substantially, especially in games. The latest data from ABI Research shows that the global average app size across all categories was 23 megabytes in September, 16% more than in March. For the most popular app category, games, the average size was 60 megabytes, meaning a six-month increase of 42%. Meanwhile, the size of leading Android apps for a similar sample was around six MBs in September, representing an increase of 10% against March. The games, however, nearly quadrupled to over 40 MBs in reported size, as Google also revamped its own submission policies.
The increase in the size of the applications suggests that they have better graphics, and in the case of games we are talking about graphic elements comparable to those available on consoles, some games in the App Store having a size that slightly exceeds 1 GB. Of course, this growth also has a bad side, because large games reduce the possibility of installing many applications in iDevices, and soon a terminal with 16 GB of storage space will be ineffective for people who like games like Infinity Blade, NOVA 3, FIFA 13, etc.
