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richard_hirsch
Active Contributor

It is always a challenge tracking down the degree of market penetration for mobile apps.  Getting download counts directly from the app stores isn’t really possible so you have to use other means and tools to get the information.

To figure out the relative success in the marketplace of mobile apps created by SAP, I used a variety of data sources.

SAP Store

The obvious first choice was the SAP Store which also provides the download-count for mobile apps:

[SOURCE]

Here is a list of the most popular mobile applications based on their download count.

Application

Download count

SAP Timesheet

1497

SAP CRM Sales

1366

SAP Travel Receipt Capture

1200

SAP Employee Lookup

1144

SAP BusinessObjects Mobile

1134

SAP Leave Request

918

SAP Mobile Apps

916

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

685

SAP Travel Expense Approval

505

SAP Support Desk

501

Note: Data collected on 04/04/2013


A quick analysis

  • Very low download counts – embarrassing low. I couldn’t decide whether the SAP Store was the wrong place to look or whether the apps were just exceeding unpopular.
  • I also noticed that SAP’s “consumer apps” (MyRunway, etc) weren’t listed there.

xyo.net

XYO.net is a site that provides additional details about app store statistics and provides some estimates regarding download counts.

Based on xyo.net’s estimates, what are the most popular mobile apps created by SAP AG?

iPhone

SAP app

Estimated total downloads

Downloads in Feb 2013

Recalls Plus

16,000

1,000

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

12,000

<1000

SAP BusinessObjects Mobile

13,000

<1000

SAP Business One

11,000

<1000

SAP StreamWork

6,000

<1000

SAP Mobile Apps

6,000

<1000

SAP CRM Sales

4,000

<1000

SAP Business ByDesign

1,000

<1000

SAP EMR Unwired

3,000

<1000

Note: Data collected on 04/04/2013

I also looked at some of the statistics for selected mobile apps of competitors.

Other competitors

Estimated total downloads

Downloads in Feb 2013

Workday

25,000

2000

Netsuite

55,000

<1000

Oracle iReceipts

11,000

<1000

Oracle Mobile Sales Forecast

14,000

<1000

A quick noteThe longer an app has been on the market, the more downloads – even at a slower rate – are possible. Some of these applications, for example, that of NetSuite, have been on the app store for a while.

iPad

SAP app

Estimated total downloads

Downloads in Feb 2013

SAP Business ByDesign Dashboard

6,000

<1000

SAP BusinessObjects Experience

6,000

<1000

SAP Visual Enterprise Viewer

5,000

<1000

SAP RealSpend

4,000

<1000

SAP Sales OnDemand for iPad

3,000

<1000

SAP BusinessObjects Mobile

2,000

<1000

SAP Business One

2,000

<1000

SAP HCM Interview Assistant

2,000

<1000

SAP HCM Manager Insight

2,000

<1000

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

2,000

<1000

Note: Data collected on 04/04/2013

I also looked at some of the statistics for selected iPad apps of competitors.

Other competitors

Estimated total downloads

Downloads in Feb 2013

Workday

15,000

<1000

Oracle Fusion Tap

3,000

<1000

Oracle Fusion Mobile Sales

<1000

<1000

A quick analysis

  • The number of total downloads described xyo.net is quite interesting and appear to show that most customers still use the app stores directly rather than download apps via the SAP Store.  This difference is also illustrated when you examine individual apps. For example, the mobile app SAP CRM Sales has a download count of 1366 in the SAP Store and an estimated download count of 4,000 in xyo.net.
  • xyo.net just has estimates whereas the SAP Store has actual download counts.
  • The Workday mobile app (both iPhone / iPad) is more popular than any single mobile app provided by SAP.  This is true for business or consumer apps (for example, Recalls Plus) created by SAP.

AppAnnie

AppAnnie focuses on the application ranking rather than trying to estimate the number of downloads. The site has excellent metrics and allows you to view trends and zoom down into the results in individual countries.

In my opinion, the most interesting data from AppAnnie are the historical ranking data.  The data is usually restricted to a particular app category.

Let’s take a deep dive into one app (SAP Timesheet) as an example.

Note: The rankings are just based on iTunes.

This diagram shows the all-time ranking for America.

[SOURCE]

Here is the same metric for the same app for Germany.

[SOURCE]

The application reached a higher ranking in Germany than in the US.

Note: AppAnnie has 89 mobile apps registered to SAP AG. I’m not going to show all their rankings in this blog.

Let’s take a look at few other mobile apps to get a better understanding of the underlying trends.

Here are the stats for SAP’s MyRunway in China which shows its popularity in the “Lifestyle” category.

[SOURCE]

The Workday mobile app is very popular in the “Business” category in the States

[SOURCE]

Note: It would be an interesting task to correlate this metric with certain events (for example, Workday’s recent IPO).

Here is the ranking for the NetSuite iPhone mobile app.

[SOURCE]

NetSuite’s mobile app has been around for a while and its decreasing ranking is one indication of how the mobile market has expanded since its release. The lack of updates (the last release was in December 2012) is bit strange though

I’ve just shown just a few metrics from AppAnnie. Readers should register on the site and explore the data themselves.

A quick analysis

  • AppAnnie rankings confirm the results from the other sources (especially xyo.net). For example, the Workday mobile has a higher ranking than other SAP mobile apps.

Conclusion

My initial goal of this blog was to get an indication of the relative popularity of SAP’s mobile apps. What I discovered was that individual business apps of other enterprise software vendors (Workday, Oracle, etc) are often more popular than those of SAP.  This can be seen in the AppAnnie rankings or the estimated downloads by xyo.net. However, a broader analysis over all mobile applications provides some interesting insights.

Note: The following graphs were based on the estimates in xyo.net and combine the data from the iPad and iPhone mobile applications.

Note: These charts are based on the mobile apps created by SAP itself – there is no way to track those apps created by the ecosystem for a particular customer or project 

The quantity of SAP mobile applications on iTunes is the most interesting trend.  No other large enterprise vendor provides such a wide variety of mobile applications. Oracle still has more total downloads (estimated) but many of these downloads are associated with its database offerings rather than its business applications. The estimated downloads in 02/2013 also demonstrate that SAP is moving ahead in this area. 

Some might say that it isn’t fair comparing Workday – with its focus on HCM – with SAP with its much broader industry focus. Yet, exactly this broad industry foundation provides SAP an advantage by focusing on higher volume – lower download counts but spread over more applications. 

My charts also reflect a moment in time rather than show the associated trends. It would be worthwhile to revisit these metrics in six months to discover what changes.  I’m assuming that the number of provided apps will increase exponentially as the mobile-related experience of SAP’s internal developers increase and the associated development tools improve.

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