Chomp: M-commerce app search queries surge in November

App store query traffic for the term "shopping" increased 1200 percent and "discounts" surged 3000 percent on Black Friday 2011 as smartphone users geared up for the annual holiday shopping season, app discovery solutions provider Chomp reports. Queries for both terms stayed consistent over the long Thanksgiving weekend before bottoming out following the Cyber Monday retail event, Chomp adds.

Consumers are now downloading more than 2 billion apps each month, Chomp states. Eighty-three percent of all November searches in Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) App Store were made by app function (e.g., "games" or "books"), and only 17 percent by app name--on Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android Market, 84 percent of searches were function-based. App Store searches for games and social networking apps dropped slightly last month, while queries for lifestyle apps increased. Games, utilities and music searches grew on Android Market, and books, finance and sports experienced small declines.

Paid apps represented 27 percent of all iOS downloads in November, up from 20 percent in October. Chomp notes that the increase was concentrated at the $0.99 and $1.99 price points. Paid app downloads decreased from 7 percent to 3 percent on Android Market, with the decreases concentrated at price points lower than $2.00. "Free" was again the top search term across all Android Market regions surveyed by Chomp.

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