Fiksu: The cost of acquiring a user for iOS developers was $1.34 in August 2012

The latest data from mobile application marketing company Fiksu shows that as users and developers are mostly waiting for the release of Apple's iPhone 5, the number of iOS application downloads and the cost for developers to acquire loyal users in August this year were both lower than in previous months.

Fiksu defines a loyal user as one who enters the game at least three times a day. From the data in the figure, we can see that the cost for iOS developers to acquire loyal users dropped from US$1.54 in July to US$1.34 in August.

However, what is interesting is that the situation in August this year is exactly the opposite of that in 2011. Last year, Apple released the iPhone 4S in October, and in September last year, the cost for developers to acquire loyal users rose to $1.64.

Fiksu CEO Micah Adler said: "August was very much like the calm before the storm in app marketing. App marketers paused their ad spending in August and waited for the release of iOS 6 this month to promote upgraded apps. These factors affected August data, and we expect the fourth quarter to be a very busy quarter."

In terms of user downloads, users showed relatively consistent performance before the release of iPhone 4S and iPhone 5. In August this year, daily downloads of free iOS apps dropped by 7.3 percentage points to 4.05 million, and in September 2011, daily downloads of the top 200 free apps on the iPhone chart dropped by 3.8 percentage points to 3.8 million.

The decline in app downloads and loyal user acquisition costs in August is just a seasonal phenomenon, and these marketing costs may rebound as developers start to attract new iPhone users, as users usually try more apps after purchasing a new smartphone.