Researching history of other apps

I’m currently doing research for my next app. Plenty of other similar apps out there. What I’d like to know is:

  1. When these apps were first published
  2. Growth trends of these apps. E.g. when did they hit 1,000-5000 downloads, when did they hit 5,000-10,000 downloads, etc.

Is there any way to accomplish this (especially point 1)?

You can do it if you personally track Google Play every day. :stuck_out_tongue:

Appannie.com and Distimo.com - here I will discuss appannie.com (I haven’t used distimo.com yet) …

For example, this is the entry for Angry Birds:

Angry Birds - Google Play Top Apps | App Annie

It shows the “Initial Release” date was Dec 16, 2011 and current version.

There was another website which listed every update and the time of update - but I cannot recall the name (one of the secondary appstores like appbrain etc. ?).

appannie.com will also show you the “Daily Ranks” - the ranking in various countries.

Angry Birds - Daily Ranks | App Annie

You can also see the graph for a specific country (since Google Play ranking seems to be segregated by country so an app’s rise and fall curve seem to be relatively independent in the different country-specific Google Play stores).

However for Rank History you will have to signup (free).

There is another similar website - distimo.com - they also have similar stats - I have not used them, if you test them out, please post your impressions.

Thanks.