Desktop platform 10K downloads?

Hello,

I have an app available on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, that is dowloaded a maximum a few times per day.

On 20 July, there was a peak on iTunes Connect sales report, with 10K downloads! All the downloads were on Desktop platform, and only 4 iPad and 6 iPhone.

The next day, the downloads returned to normal levels, no more Desktop download.

What is the explanation for these 10K Desktop downloads? A bug in iTunes Connect?

Thanks,

Patrick

Replies

This isn't something nefarious or suspicious, nor is it a bot. It is the Volume Purchase Program, either for educational institutions, or for large enterprises. The way these institutions distribute apps to staff internally is via some form of Mobile Device Management system. There are apps they have to distribute to staff/students whatever, and these are purchased in a way that shows up as a desktop purchase in the stats. This kinda makes sense as the person purchasing your app is most likely sat at a desktop computer putting the order through the system. Unlike a user purchasing and downloading your app, this is like a 'right to download' so many copies of your app, and not actual downloads. Looking through your analytics, you will see this to be the case.


Now, someone within an institution may have requested your app be made available over their system, maybe even just for a team/class of 10 or 20. However, for the person administering this system, if the app is free, it costs them the same amount in terms of their time to put an order in for 20,000 as it does for 20. Theoretically someone else could come along later and ask for another 30 copies. What are they to do? Waste time, putting in exact orders for the requested amount each time a request comes in, or block booking for the maximum they are ever likely to need and never having to repeat the action? You guessed it, they block order more than they will ever need.


This is annoying from a stats point of view, but there's really nothing you can do. X licenses have been requested for your app, but they are not obliged to use all of them. All you can really do is be aware that this is a 'thing', and maybe strip desktop purchases out of your stats (or at least strip out these huge one off purchases that are normally for a suspiciously round number). Very few normal end users make desktop purchases through the iTunes app these days. Certainly in my own reports, they normally just look like noise.


One other thing. If you have a paid app and put it free for a few days, I've found that some institutions seem to take these as opportunities to bulk purchase an app "in case" it might be useful for that organisation in the future. I've seen that the last few times I've done this. The first time it happened it nearly put me in a panic, along the lines of "if only I'd waited, maybe I'd have had 20,000 paid sales! 😮". It's important to remember that these are rarely "real" sales, quite often they're opportunistic, and wouldn't have happened if it hadn't have been for the free sale. In my book, running a free sale of a paid app for a few days is like the best form of publicity available - you get massive coverage for no outlay, just a few weeks of elevated support levels afterwards. And quite often there's a day or two of elevated sales after going back to paid which quite often covers the normal "lost" revenue. You just have to be aware that some purchasers for institutions are actively watching the "gone free" lists and taking advantage of them to get quality apps in bulk on the cheap.

Oh no, contrary to that spiel I've posted above, which in normal circumstances I'd contend still stands, I have about an excess 12K free downloads yesterday from China. The raw report has only just become available, and it does seem to show this as 12K iPhone downloads, NOT desktop, and without any promo code hinting at EDU, nor with an expected jump in installs which you'd expect to see for real iPhone purchases. Which goes counter to everything I've experienced previously.


So... either Apple have messed up their reporting (always a possibility), or there really is some nefarious bot network in China downloading multiple copies of apps for no good reason whatsoever...


Anyone else? 🙂

That's exactly.


On January 2, I had 140,000 downloads from China for a game that is not even aimed at children and educational (though it is available for Volume Purchase Program)


I happened, in the past, to have downloads for Volume Purchase Program, and these downloads were marked as EDU and came from Desktop (On Appannie are marked as promo)


The donwloads came last week from China, apart from not being marked as EDU, come from iPhone (NO Desktop)


I'll try to ask Apple Support again


Among the various hypotheses, even I thought the factories where they produce the iPhone, to test it.

Or, of course, an actions to damage Apple and developers.

Or a bug in the system of statistics.

The same thing happened to my free iOS app, where there was a +10K bump from US app store.

Normally, I get 400 DLs from US store per day.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1_TPpMUUAAQvsS.jpg

We experienced the same thing - apprx 20k downloads on iPhone on Jan 8th - no apparent reason why, all China.


Would be interested in hearing an official answer if anyone comes across it.


Boone

.Bram downloads from the US could be "Volume Purchase Program".

You have to control the text report and see if they are marked as EDU (or check Device filter if they come from Desktop)


Consider that our apps (several free apps), in the last 20 days has been downloaded about 400K times from China (no EDU, no Desktop)

While usually, for 20 days, we were on 30K


Apple responded that the downloads are regular and can not give more informations about costumers.


In the apps analysis page of iTunes Connect, there are no "product views" as the number of downloads.

No increase in revenue and even sessions.

So this are not real donwloads


Maybe they just want to alter the conversions data, at least this is the first visible effect

I am seeing this as well with my app, though not the volumes others are reporting. Seems odd they can download the app without visiting the apps AppStore page.

Same and same comments from apple. The reporting system is working just fine. But uh... the reporting system is reporting fake downloads. Apple can provide no further comment. Whatever.

I am seeing this across *all* of my free apps.


300+ downloads a day all from China.

Been going on almost two months now. Solid.


Annoying!

Same here! Normally ~4 downloads per day of my free app, but the last 2 months ~60 per day, all from China.


Weird. And why? Are they trying to kill Apple's bandwidth by doing massive botnet downloads? 😝

Hi, is there any explanation for this kind of peak? We have the same issue, 2 times peaks with 10k download from desktop in the last 2 months despite that the app is not available for mac app store

This is still happening. We had exactly 1000 downloads in Germany for the Desktop as an Institutional Establishment, then the again a few days later exactly 1000 downloads from Japan for the Desktop as an Institutional Establishment. It is very annoying as we now have to filter our stats to eliminate this unbelievable data.