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

We experienced the same thing on 10/15. Normally we have about 30 sales a day but there was a spike to 1,000 in desktop sales on 10/15. There was no corresponding spike in App Analytics store views or on our website or social media.


Anyone have any ideas as to why that might occur?

We experienced the same thing, also on 10/15. Huge spike in "Desktop sales" on 10/15, no corresponding spike in other analytics views or evidence as to why this could have happened.


Looking forward to hearing if others experienced this and/or what Apple's response is, because it impacts our internal reporting.

had same thing yesterday 11/25. had 3,000 for desktop, only 4 normally. contacted Apple but no response.

I had the same thing on Aug 24th: over 11,000 downloads in a single day, up from an average of about 20. I ended up calling iTunes Connect support twice, and both times they insisted that there was no problem with their reporting. Any fool can see that there's an anomaly in the stats, but they seem set on blowing me off. :/

Same thing here. Over the past few months I've had it happen 3 or 4 times. Usually between 2k and 5k downloads. Since my app (Box Drop Math) is an educational game, I assumed that these numbers reflected downloads through Apple's Volume Purchase Program - but I'm not sure.

Are these free downloads or paid? I'd be really happy if I had 10,000 downloads in a single day (especially paid). Did your app rankings shoot up too? I'd imagine with that many downloads in a single day you should have jumped up pretty high in the rankings.


I'm assuming you are talking about an iOS app (not Mac?). It seems pretty strange, most people don't shop for iOS apps on the Desktop in iTunes.

For my Apps the App Store Views take from App Analylics is on the 50 - 150 range but on the Sales and Trends and over the same period downloaded units are in the range 1k to 25k. This happens when I make App free the vast majority of the downloads 99.9% are from desktops. The data doesn't correlate. Normal user behaviour is to view the page and then download. I suspicious that some bot is initiating downloads and skewing the stats.

Some educational institutions may be downloading blocks of 100's or 1000's using their educational purchase plan account, possibly for future use in the next school year, and/or for their entire student body. For free apps, these blocks might never show up in the usage analytics. e.g. they're warehoused like unused school books in the district book depository.

Happened to us today. Normally 400-500 downloads a day, all on iPhone and iPad. Today four times as many, all on desktop in US/Canada. Sometimes we know to expect these spikes, for example when we got reviewed in Cult of Mac or Macworld. But no such thing today. Weird. I expect it'll be back to normal tomorrow.

This happened to our free iOS app on June 21 & June 23 (2016).


We normally have between 100-150 a day, but on the 21st we had 10,146! Then we had 3,120 on the 23rd.


The spikes were all on desktop in US/Canada.


Very peculiar!

I'm experiencing the same 'problem'. I have a non-english (free) educational app, which on Okt. 26 had 2.1k downloads, where I normally would have 1-5 downloads each day. All from the USA as iPhone downloads (not as desktop downloads).


I'm pretty sure this is not correct, but am looking for a more definitive answer. Maybe some bot is downloading the app? Or could it perhaps be that an (educational) institue by accident bulk bought this app (seeing the fact that the downloads are from the USA and the app not being in english). The latter seems unlikely to me.


P.S. this person seems to have the same 'problem' (or he/she actually has a really popular app) https://www.quora.com/I-made-one-of-my-games-free-and-suddenly-had-a-large-spurt-in-app-downloads-on-the-iTunes-iOS-app-store-What-should-I-do

For sure unusual high spikes in downloads is the Volume Purchase Program for Education.

You can confirm it by downloading your report for the given day, open it with Excel (or anyspreadsheet program) and you'll find EDU in the Promo Code column on the line with a high Units number.

These unfortunately doesn't reflect real downloads on your app.



ps: if it helps, you can download Dino Rush to give us some real downloads 🙂

Hi guys,


we had the same thing happening to us, apparently these are the apps purchased through Volume Purchase Program for institiutions.


Is there a way to find out which institution made the purchase?


Thanks 🙂

In our case, we have got 15.000 downloads on 26th of December, and 32.500 downloads for two apps on 29th of December


Total 80.000 downloads from China, 3 different apps, iPhone device, NO analytics sessions increases


I look at the report and this downloads are not marked as EDU


What is your opnion?

Thanks

Don

Same here, the last couple of days we have reports of 100k downloads over several free apps all from China. In the report they are not marked with 'EDU' but they are definitely not real since we did not move up in the Chinese charts and see no additional user activity on our servers. We contacted them and they 'blamed' it on the Volume Purchase Program.