iSteam’s Open Letter to TechCrunch
November 20, 2009
San Francisco
GreatApps Ltd.
Dear TechCrunch,
We are the authors of the “iSteam” app for the iPhone. We are big fans of your website, and were surprised to see that a publication like yours would provide misleading information in one of your recent articles by Roi Carthy:
You mention the following about our competitor app “iFog”:
- “it was bought 200,000 times for $0.99 a pop”.
- “As soon as it was released, iFog climbed the iPhone app charts, reaching the number one download spot in most European counties and even made it into the top 20 in the US version of the App Store”
While we do not know the exact figures for “iFog”, we can tell you that our own “iSteam” app, having been featured in major publications worldwide and peaking as the #1 free app in the majority of the iTunes Stores (including US, Canada, UK & Australia), is now near the 200,000 mark for paid downloads. Judging by the app store rankings we are quite confident that the 200,000 number you give for “iFog” is at least an order of magnitude more than the real number, therefore greatly misleading your readers.
Regarding your second claim, we also challenge the validity of it and challenge the authors of “iFog” to provide information regarding the countries where they hit the number one spot or even made it to the top 5.
Moreover, the “iFog” authors claim on their iTunes page that their app is “as seen on national TV”, and “Dana Carvey’s favorite app”, both statements of questionable validity.
Hopefully you can update your article to better reflect the real information upon confirming the actual data with the developers.
From your loyal readers at GreatApps.
Best regards,
Kostas Eleftheriou
Cofounder, GreatApps Ltd
