Which country loves Zombies, Run! the most? Let’s investigate!

Sales (normalised to US = 100)

We’re not about to reveal our exact sales figures, but this chart shows that like most apps, the US dwarfs the rest of the world, singlehandedly accounting for almost 70% of sales; Canada, Australia, the UK, and everyone else can only look on in envy.

But this doesn’t tell us anything interesting. We know that the US is a big country with 300 million people, we know that they have a lot of iPhones. So maybe there is a more useful way to slice and dice this data.

Sales per Capita

If you look at sales per capita – in other words, dividing sales figures by population and normalising (look at the red bars) then Australia emerges as the top dog, punching well above its weight with 25% more sales per capita than the US! They’re very closely followed by Sweden, Denmark, and Canada, with Norway a little further behind. Notable English-speaking laggards include the United Kingdom and New Zealand, who’re only selling at half the rate of the US. What the hell, Brits/Kiwis?

Sales adjusted for Addressable Market

While sales per capita is a lot better than absolute sales figures, it’s not perfect. Some countries are richer than others, and some countries have more iPhones and and iPod Touches. If we want to see how well Zombies, Run! is performing, then we need to adjust our figures for the Addressable Market – that is, the number of people who can actually buy our game.

Apple don’t break down their device sales figures by country, but Flurry makes a good approximation in their iOS and Android Addressable Market charts from December 2011. Of course, we’re only selling on iOS (at the moment) but it’s better than nothing!

If you adjust for Addressable Market, the chart looks a bit different (look at the orange bars): Canada zooms into the lead without even a tip of the toque to its rivals in Australia, Sweden and Denmark.

This is a bit weird though – why does Canada increase its numbers so much when every other country stay more or less the same? The answer is simple: Canadians still have a lot of Blackberrys, the poor, deluded fools. As as result, they have fewer iOS and Android devices, so the number of sales per available devices is actually higher. I suppose there’s something to be said for patriotism, at least…

Time for some unbridled speculation!

Why is Canada so far ahead? It helps that they speak English (or so they say), a trait they share with #2 and #5 (Australia and the US) – and arguably they are culturally closer to the UK than the US.

But if it was just down to being culturally close to the UK and speaking English… why on Earth are sales in the UK low? Maybe it’s the weather – but then again, the weather in Canada isn’t that great either. Perhaps British people are just more conservative in their choice of games. Perhaps they’re not as keen on running. Who knows?

The other interesting finding is that Nordic countries love Zombies, Run! Some of this has to do with their high levels of English speaking and general outdoorsy nature, but maybe there’s also something about zombies that speaks to their tortured souls…

This data is accurate as of a couple of weeks ago