We just launched Performance Analytics, the first service of our apprupt Performance Marketing Suite this week and thought it would be a good time to tell you what we are all about.

Although just recently officially launched, we have been working on apprupt this entire year, together with many developers and other partners – there are many more things to come and we will announce these throughout the next months.

So far, these are the core problems that we observe and want to help solve, when looking at the iPhone app market and talking to developers:

• The App Store is flooded with apps, many of which are junk.
• Overall and category rankings have a massive impact on sales and attention received by iPhone users
• Overall and category rankings do not at all reflect the best apps in the App Store
• Apps have a very short lifetime, with high sales and usage (if at all) at the beginning of their lifespan only
• There are many really good apps in the App Store that never get the attention they deserve
• There are not many possibilities for app developers to market their app to their target group, without either a good network (PR) or a large marketing budget (which most developers do not have) or both
• There really is no transparency as to which marketing channels are working and which are not, as developers have no data on customer acquisition costs and download conversions
• Transparency is also a big issue for users (finding apps). As many of them use the ranking lists of the App Store to find apps and developers have little means to get to them otherwise, they miss out on many good products
• Many developers struggle to make developing iPhone apps a profitable and sustainable business
• The fast-increasing number of apps is amplifying the problems named above

What we think is needed

• Transparency:  developers need to have complete knowledge on what is working for them and what is not, marketing-wise. If developers can use this knowledge to get to their target group, then both, the developer and the user, will benefit
• Marketing: besides transparency on marketing channels, we also need more channels for developers to get to their target group.
• Profitability: developers must make sure they get a return on their investment (which is at least the time they spent developing an app). Otherwise they will turn their back to this platform. So besides transparent marketing means, we also need marketing channels that work for everyone involved with a minimum up-front risk for each party.

At apprupt we work hard on making these things a reality to help developers get to their users and with this, helping users to find more and better apps. We believe that a focus on marketing performance is essential for this.

So let us know what you think – did we miss anything obvious?