Is it possible to access the App Store Data for market analyzation?

Question

I am wondering if the App Store provides an API that allows others to access the data like descriptions, prices, reviews, etc.?

Answer 1

The iTunes Store is the API.

All pages in the iTunes Store are simply XML files rendered by iTunes. You can parse these files yourself and navigate around to your heart's content.

Here's the URL for the front page:

http://ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/com.apple.jingle.app.store.DirectAction/storeFront

You might also want to see:

• http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/itms/
• http://www.s-seven.net/itunes_xml

Answer 2

Apple has an official API for the App Store, it's named iTunes Search API. In the documentation there are also some examples on how to use the "lookup" and "search" endpoints, quite easy to use and data is returned in JSON format :)

Unfortunately that's not the same with Google Play (previously known as Android Market) which does not expose apps' meta-data through an API.

To get that data for Android, you could develop your own HTML crawler, parse the page and extract the app meta-data you need. This topic has been covered in other questions, for instance here.

If you don't want to implement all that by yourself, you could use a third-party service to access Android apps meta-data through a JSON-based API.

For instance, 42matters.com(the company I work for) offers a unified API for both Android and iOS, here more details:

https://42matters.com/app-market-data

The endpoints range from "lookup" (to get one app's meta-data, probably what you need) to "search", but we also expose "rank history" and other stats from the leading app stores. We have extensive documentation for all supported features, you find them in the left panel: https://42matters.com/docs/overview

I hope this helps, otherwise feel free to get in touch with me. I know this industry quite well and can point you in the right direction.

Regards,

Andrea