Most Stolen iPhone Apps

8 Dec

We found out while researching a previous post that iPhone App theft has iPhone Apps Thiefbecome so prevalent that significant % of iPhone Apps are lost through theft. This is what Pinch Media have found in their research:

Just over 60% of paid apps using Pinch have been pirated.  This estimate is also low, since application pirates occasionally disable our tracking.  When an application is pirated, an average of 34% of all installs are cracked — in other words, about half of legitimate paid downloads. 

This surprised us as most iPhone Apps are so cheap it does not seem worth the bother to steal them.  And, of course, an iPhone has to be unlocked or jailbroken for stolen iPhone Apps to be downloaded to them.

The team here at iPhonegizmo were curious to know what iPhone Apps were considered worth stealing, so we went on the hunt to find out! Here are our results:

1) Its not a case of which Apps – because pirates steal them in mass. So typically, a collection of Apps are offered in one download. For example, one iPhone download package is called “iPhoneteam megapack” and contains a whopping 967 stolen Apps!! The package contains a wide variety of Apps – probably most are not of any use to any one user, and they are not the current version on offer in iTunes.  They have a range of price at iTunes, but most are low. Selecting at random from the list, we found:

A Blackjack Card Counter (3.99), FIGHTER PILOT – Guns of War (3.99), 7 Chords ($1.99), Absolute Fitness (9.99)

http://iphone.tomtom.com/uploads/tx_tti/RSUM_US.png

2) The megapack was not the most popular download of stolen Apps. The Tom Tom Apps were! And this also surprised us, because these are big-price Apps. TomTom US & Canada, for example, sells for $99.99. The comment by one co-thief:

Thanks for saving me a hundred bucks!

The one consolation for the Tom Tom crowd might be the enthusiasm expressed by the people who steal the App – they say its great!

By far the best app out there!!! (nova71)

Awesome App !!!! ( pete0726)

Tom Tom Western Europe ($139.99) was a close second stolen iPhone App downloads. Navigon Europe ($94.99) was also a very popular App to steal, though the unhappy comments posted by downloaders for this App suggest that the stolen version does not work very well!

The message for Apple is very clear. A lot of people want a good navigation apps for their iPhones.

Our conclusion? – we think it would be a smart move for Apple to do a deal with TOM TOM and have a navigation App included as part of the standard package in any future versions of the iPhone.

(And BTW, we have not given links to any of the stolen Apps because we do not want to encourage anyone to jailbreak their iPhone. Also, we know that most developers struggle to just break even on the Apps they develop and we also reckon that anyone who can affords an iPhone can shell out the measly few $$ that most Apps cost!)