Today, MacRumors reported that the cost of App Store piracy is roughly $450 million, according to a site called “24/7 Wall St.” The article sparked a surprising amount of discussion on the MacRumors forums, where 499 comments have been posted so far.
What surprised me most about these comments is that there seems to be widespread ignorance of the reality of piracy on the iTunes App Store.
Here’s what I mean:
“I didn’t even know App Store piracy existed. This story seems a bit wild.” -powerbook911
“huh? you can pirate iphone apps?” -funkyp56
“I understand that iPhone piracy is theoretically possible, but how can they possibly suggest that 75% of all apps in circulation are on the devices of users who are savvy enough to figure out how to do it?! That’s simply absurd. You can’t simply download an iPhone app like you would download a copy of Windows or Photoshop. The authors of this report obviously don’t know that.” -DTphonehome
“How the hell can one pirate iTunes apps? And how come two thirds of all downloaded apps are pirated and I haven’t heard about this at all? The whole iTunes thing is such a closed system I thought there wasn’t a way to pirate it…” -baryon
“I also didn’t know that piracy of apps existed. I feel like we would have heard about this by now. Do they mean that if for example I buy an app, and I share it with my brother, I pirated it to him? Because as far as iTunes is concerned, we authorized both our computers so we could share music and thats perfectly okay in terms of Apple’s policies, so that’s not pirating. I think the author of this article is confused, and possibly stupid.” -nickXedge
First, to clear up a few misconceptions from the comments above:
1. App Store piracy is alive and well.
2. Yes, you can pirate iPhone apps. That does not mean you should.
3. Actually, you can “simply download an iPhone app like you would download a copy of Windows or Photoshop.” You need to fulfill some prerequisites first – like jailbreaking and and finding a source for the cracked binaries – but it has been done, and by at least thousands of people.
4. Developers don’t talk about it. I don’t know if this is because talking about it might encourage some people to try pirating some apps. But the fact that many people don’t know about it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
5. Installing apps on multiple devices with a single iTunes account is supported by Apple. This is legal, and is not considered piracy. The piracy we’re talking about here involves actually cracking the binary – that is, removing the encryption and installing it on a jailbroken device using jailbreak tools.
That said, please note the following:
Piracy is stealing. It is illegal and immoral. Don’t do it.
If you do pirate an app, go and buy a legitimate copy.
The numbers stated in the article are just assumptions and guesses; so I thought that as an app developer myself, I’d chime in with some real stats from a real, highly-ranked iPhone app.
Whiteboard Pro: Collaborative Drawing has been ranked in the Top 10 paid apps in the Productivity category.
Here are some actual stats, as reported by Pinch Media Analytics:
Total cracked users
3,595 (14.20%)
Total cracked sessions
20,285 (6.77%)
From this we can conclude that at least one app is experiencing a piracy rate of 14.2%. I have no idea whether this is typical of apps on the App Store, so other developers would need to chime in with their numbers. Actually, I suspect the most accurate stats could come directly from Pinch Media themselves – and perhaps they have (or will soon) publish a report on the matter.
To the many paying customers of GreenGar Studios, I thank you – it’s people like you who encourage the development of quality iPhone apps. Keep it up! 
Adversite here
Comments
Thank you for taking the time to write this up, I found it very informative!
Obviously nobody took the time to do simple math on the numbers given in the article. Let’s do it!
7.5 Million Jailbroken iPhones, 40% of those use pirated software = a total of 4 Million iPhones with at least some pirated Apps installed on them.
510 Million paid applications and a piracy rate of 75% = 1530 Million pirated Apps, as stated in the article.
That means, there should be an average 382(!) pirated applications on each of these iPhones. I don’t think that is plausible. The numbers don’t work out, they miss even the biggest possible ballpark.
In my opinion it is the piracy rate figure of 75%, that seeems way off. Even if that is the correct rate for some popular game titles, even if it would be the average rate for games in general – it surely cannot be extended to be the average piracy rate over all types of paid applications.
The authors of the article should revise their results.
Sorry, even worse:
Not 4, but 3 Million iPhones, leading to an average 510(!) pirated applications on each of those.
Moderator, feel free to correct my previous post and delete this one.
Actually, your estimates for how many apps are installed on the average jailbroken phone match my experience of people I’ve met who do this.
Jailbroken phones generally have many hundreds of pirated apps. Doesn’t mean they use many of them for more than a few seconds.
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