Google launched the Chrome Web Store on December 7th, 2010 at the Chrome OS conference. I have downloaded and used several of these apps on Google Chrome, many of these are really good apps and shows that the future of the web store is really bright.

However It has been almost 2 weeks since the Web store launched, so how has it performed? How many apps have are there in the web store? Which are the best selling apps? Which apps have been downloaded the most? To find answers to these questions I decided to do an analysis on how the web store has worked out and what the stats are like.

I have based this analysis on the current numbers available at the Chrome Web Store since Google has not provided users statistics about the Chrome Web Store yet.

Facts About Chrome Web Store

First of, Chrome Web Store has seen millions of downloads, with the top 15 Chrome Apps seeing over 1.5 million downloads so far. Here are some more facts about the Chrome Web Store and Apps:

• There are ~2200+ apps in the Chrome Web Store right now
• There are over ~10,500 Google Chrome Extensions and themes.
• Top 15 apps have been downloaded over 1.5 million times
• The top two most downloaded apps in the Chrome Web Store are games, and they account for almost half a million downloads
• All apps except for TweetDeck are web shortcuts
• NY Times is the only news app among the top 15 downloaded apps
• Out of the top 15 downloaded apps, 9 are Google products
• Groove Shark is the only music app in the top 15

Top 15 Apps in Chrome Web Store

The Chrome Store has several apps to choose from. I have written about quite a few of them (read about the Chrome Apps). Many of the apps are just web shortcuts, but the number of in-browser apps has been increasing. The top 15 apps on the Google Web Store currently features the following:

1. Entanglement – 221,510 downloads
2. Poppit – 217, 247 downloads
3. TweetDeck – 143,867 downloads
4. Gmail – 125,359 downloads
5. NY Times – 119,015 downloads
6. Google Books – 113,816 downloads
7. Google Docs – 99,922 downloads
8. Google Maps – 83,263 downloads
9. Google Calendar – 73,077 downloads
10. Picnik – 69,933 downloads
11. YouTube – 62,445 downloads
12. Google Reader – 60,276 downloads
13. Groove Shark – 58,831 downloads
14. Spring Pad – 50,761 downloads
15. Picasa – 49,972 downloads

Are Paid Apps Working in Chrome Web Store?

It has been only 2 weeks since Chrome Web Store was launched, but it looks like several of the paid apps are not making good money. Some of the apps have seen good download numbers, but many of them offer a free trial, so it is not clear whether these trials has been actually converted into sales or not.

The apps which do not offer free trials have seen miniscule downloads, so it might take a bit of time for developers to actually start selling huge number of paid apps.

Here are some stats for the paid apps in the store, I have mentioned which apps offer trials and you will see that they have a higher number of installs, however, there is no indication as to how many of them converted into sales. I have reached out to some of the paid app developers who offer free trials, but have yet to hear back from them. Will update this section once I get proper numbers from them.

Top 10 Paid Apps in Chrome Web Store

1. Onslaught Arena – $4.99, has 3715 users and they offer a free trial
2. Wordico – $2.99/year, has 1025 users but they offer a free trial
3. BrainPOP Featured Movie – $1.99/month, has 536 users but they offer a free trial
4. Color & Draw for kids – $1.99, has sold 417 copies
5. Real Solitaire – $1.99, has sold 343 copies
6. Contrasaurus: Defender of the American Dream – $2.99, has 145 users and they offer a free trial
7. Dreams 2 – $1.99, has sold 144 copies
8. Toddler Jukebox – $1.99, has sold 92 copies
9. Yes or No Tarot – $2.99, has sold 60 copies
10. Animals Puzzles – $1.99, has sold 58 copies

Apart from the 4 apps which offer a free trial, the other 6 apps have generated a combined sales of only $2276.86 in two weeks. Though two weeks may not be enough time to reflect on this data, it shows that paid apps aren’t working out that well. Also most of the apps that have sold are children’s games.

What’s Missing In Chrome Web Store and Apps

Google Chrome Web Store provides a good way to find and install apps, however, right now they are not focusing on new apps. I was able to browse most recent extensions which were released, however, find newer apps is quite a pain and I have had to practically browse through all the pages to find newer apps.

Having a separate section for recently added or updated apps would allow existing users to quickly find them and install them. Hopefully, Google should add this feature shortly.

Also, many of the Chrome apps are mere shortcuts or bookmarks. Though it is useful and saves some time on typing the URL directly, I would love to see more apps which work in-browser. Of course there are quite a few apps which do provide this experience, it would be really good to see more of these apps making it into the app store.

Another problem I have seen and also pointed out while using the Cr-48 is the lack of sync for data created by the apps. So if your app stores data locally, it will not be available on another PC. I would love to see apps sync data in the cloud, so that I have access to it from any computer.

Summarizing

Chrome Web Store is only 2 weeks old and is still in it’s infancy. I am very sure that over the next few months, the web store will include some really useful apps. The quality of some of the apps and extensions have been really good and it would be interesting to see new developments of in-browser apps or extensions.

Have you been using Google Chrome and the Chrome Web Store apps? What are your thoughts about them? Do feel free to add to this analysis without your own inputs.ac