Back in the summer of 2008, when Apple rolled out its online marketplace for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, users were quite mesmerized by the online platform’s offerings. The App Store provided people with an increasing number of applications, many of them being free, but Apple’s magic meant that users were able to browse through the various programs with ease.

The expectations were confirmed after a few months, as Apple reported that a big number of developers released applications for the iPhone. Moreover, Apple’s own revenues were looking quite promising, and so did the impressive number of downloads on the website.

Still, a recent research made by Pinch Media showed that the average iPhone user gets rid of the downloaded apps in just a few days. The study pointed out that only a third of the users who download an application would use it during the following day.

Moreover, only five percent of the users kept a downloaded application for more than 20 days. Mind you, these figures are available for applications that aren’t free, so one might consider that free apps remain for even less time on the users’ phones.

However, while some analysts pointed out that these figures show a saturation of the App Store’s offer, others realized that an app’s lifespan pattern is actually a good thing. For instance, Greg Yardley, CEO at Pinch Media, stated that Apple’s business model with the App Store makes it easy for users to wander around through an endless number of applications.

Hence, only few of these apps actually manage to remain as the users’ favorites. Yardley added that the App Store still offers many opportunities for developers, showing that it will be the users who will decide who will succeed and who will not.