That's the conclusion from monetisation and data outfit Fiksu.
Providing figures for December 2012, it found that the average aggregate volume of the daily downloads of the top 200 US free iPhone apps - its App Store Competitive Index - rose to 5.32 million.
As expected, this was up 16 percent compared to November as millions of iPhone presents were activated, but the number was down compared to October 2012 when the iPhone 5's launch generated a year-high peak.
Costs down
Fiksu also looks at the cost of 'buying' a user who will open your app at least three time: something it calls its 'Cost per Loyal User Index'.
This was up 29c from November's total to $1.67.
Driven by high-scale marketing campaigns, this was a year high, but as Fiksu CEO Micah Adler noted, it was down from the $1.81 level of December 2011.
"Mobile app marketers are a year older and wiser, and we saw this reflected in the December Fiksu Indexes," he commented.
"Unlike the spending frenzy we saw in 2011, many opted for a value-versus-volume approach in 2012, collectively applying a more conservative, sophisticated strategy to their Q4 campaigns and largely avoiding big gambles on a long App Store freeze."
