Apple recently announced that their iPhone SDK was downloaded over 100,000 times in just four days. iPhone SDK is a set of tools that allows developers to write software for iPhone or the iPod Touch and is free during the beta period.
This is significant because the iPhone SDK is no lean software – the installer (iphone_sdk.dmg) weighs a whooping 2.1 GB and could have an raised bandwidth concerns with so many Apple developers simultaneously downloading the software from all across the globe.
When Microsoft released the second beta of Windows Vista, the demand for that 3.5 GB installer was so huge that it slowed down the Microsoft website and went on to become the largest downloaded software on the Internet.
Coming to iPhone SDK, what constitutes a "download" ?
Apple may be incrementing their download counter as soon as a user initiates the download session – he or she may discontinue downloading the software but that will be still increment the overall download statistics.
John Dowdell of Adobe thinks these are no meaningful stats because only 10% of download attempts actually result in download completions.
Adobe uses an interesting approach to count the number of Flash Player installations – the software pings the Adobe servers when the player is run for the first time after installation so it discounts downloads that were not completed or were successfully completed but not installed by the users.
That definitely sounds a better approach to measure downloads on the Internet.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/gadgets/phones/download-iphone-sdk-installer-apple-dmg/2550/
Tags: feature, iphone, ipod touch, Gadgets, Mobile Phones
Reader Comments
Since they require that you register in order to download the SDK, they have probably counted the number of developers signed up or accessed who have downloaded the SDK. That wouldn’t be hard for them to do, and it would be completely accurate.
I downloaded nearly the whole thing three times before I actually got it. The previous two attempts went to something like 1.9GB and stopped.
Of course it is true that many people are downloading it just out of curiosity to check it out, but 100,000-odd downloads is still a lot. It seems like it’s more than they expected since they do know how to provision bandwidth.
Regardless of whether they did get 100,000 completed, unique user downloads, I don’t think there’s any question that the inteerest in iPhone is phenomenal. People really love the device and want to create software for it.
I’m working on my application now. Now nobody steal my idea! :-).
D
Written by David H Dennis on 03.13.08
Another point to futher skew the figures is that once people had succesfully downloaded the SDK, it was put up on Bit Torrent and downloaded by more people who could not get it from Apples site. I wonder how many people got it this way compared to directly from Apple?
Written by L. Curtis Boyle on 03.13.08