The problem is that the app store does not provide any stats on the number of downloads. You can get a ranking, but that tells you nothing about download numbers. You can glean together bits of information from the occasional developer who says "my app that hit #4 had 15,000 downloads", but since no one (except Apple) knows exactly how the ranking algorithms work, even that's not accurate. Further, the number of downloads required to reach a given ranking changes daily based on the number of downloads on the whole store that day, and how many downloads a given app had on the previous day or two. Additionally, many of the top grossing games on the store use a freemium model, and that's even harder to account for, as IAP purchases don't affect rank at all (except for in the top grossing charts).

That's why this survey was important to do.

Thank you science, for trying to take the mystery out of art. Not everything can be quantified. Some things just need to be appreciated and enjoyed for what they are.

We have a so-called "non-directional" day where I work. It's pretty nice; every Wednesday you're supposed to work on some sort of side project. There's a few around you can join, or start your own. The caveat, of course, is that the company owns any outcome from this, but that's fair since it's their time. Of course, if you contribute to a GPL licensed product, then the company is the proud owner of the copyright to a GPL'ed patch, so you can do that if you want. It's also possible to get approval to start a new GPLed project, and people do have independant (non-GPL) projects that they work on in their "real" spare time that the company doesn't have any sort of claim to.

You do have to get the project approved, but that's only to prevent you from starting a "let's blow up the company" type of project. The only one that was ever been turned down was one that would directly compete with us.

The main problem has actually been getting people motivated to start a project, and then keeping them working on it (especially in the face of real deadlines). A few have turned out to be surprisingly interesting, but we haven't had any notable successes like Google has, at least not just yet. There have been a few sizable improvements to internal projects that came from this though. A key factor was moving the day from Friday to Wednesday; when it was on Friday there was just about no motivation to get started on these things.

If you can convince your management to approve this, it's nice and rewarding.