Record 60 billion dollars spent on apps throughout 2017
Mobile users have spent nearly 60 billion dollars on apps and games throughout 2017, showcases the latest report from Sensor Tower. The data includes both App Store and Play Store, as well as subscriptions, in-app purchases, and premium apps. In total, this represents an increase of approximately 35% compared to 2016.
Twice more revenue for Apple’s App Store
Interestingly enough, for Apple’s App Store consumers spent around 38.5 billion dollars, nearly double of that of Google’s Play Store, estimated at around $20.1 billion, indicating why the number of paid apps is larger on Apple’s side, and why developers earn more on this side compared to the other.
Although it’s worth mentioning that Google Play Store grew 16.7% versus 6.7% of that of Apple, due to that fact that as an operating system Android is being adopted at a higher rate in developing countries. This translates into 64 billion first installs of an app, around 2.3 times higher of the estimated 28 billion on App Store.
30% increase in mobile game revenue and downloads
In terms of mobile games, people spent 30% more in 2017, accounting for an estimated 48.3 billion dollars spent on games, or 82% of all app revenue. $30 billion for App Store compared to nearly $18 billion for Play Store.
About 77% of mobile games or 27.2 billion have been downloaded on Play Store, while the other remaining percentage or 8.3 billion downloads were on App Store. The number of game downloads grew around 15% from a total of 31 billion downloaded in 2016.
Apple confirms the revenue
According to Apple, iOS Developers have earned about 26.5 billion in 2017, an over 30% increase compared to 2016, that’s the number that has been paid to developers after the 30% cut from Apple.
So if we compare these numbers with the numbers from Sensor Tower, we can see that the later one is talking about gross numbers, and the findings fall within 1% of the actual figure. As a company that offers mobile development services as well, we saw an increase in revenue and downloads the mobile apps we developed for App Store, compared to Play Store, especially due to the ease of payment options for App Store, as well as the increased mobile growth in emerging markets.
Zero apps per month?
If we look at some studies in the past that indicated consumers download zero apps per month on average, the latest reports show that there’s much more potential, especially for new downloads in emerging markets such as China and India, which App Annie attributed Q3 2017’s record revenues and downloads, not to forget the impact of other countries from Southeast Asia, in particular, Vietnam and Indonesia.
More revenues from Play Store
Together with the mobile team at Frakton, whenever we talk about paid apps or freemium apps (lately an ongoing discussion about paid Albmoji on iOS and free on Android), we come to the point where we accept the fact that it’s much easier to develop and monetize for App Store, rather than on Play Store, especially because there’s a much lower tendency to search for the “free premium APK” on Apple’s side, whereas on Android there are plenty of ways that you can use to download a paid app and bypass all the hard work put into the app from the development teams around the world.
This in return gives space for more quality apps on App Store versus add-loaded apps on Play Store, which are free to download but often have a terrible user experience overloaded with ads.
What I’d like to to see from Google, as we do develop both iOS and Android apps, is an improved market that filters out crappy apps and is overhauled to the level of App Store to motivate developers to create better apps, which can be both freemium or paid, but which offer the same ease of use experience as on iOS and which bring more revenues for developers as well, putting them a bit way outside the streams of ads. Especially with the upcoming trends around Augmented Reality and Virtual Realiaty, Google needs to step-up the game.
Originally published on Linkedin
