App Store Beats Google Play In Revenue With Nearly 94 Percent Higher In Q3 2018

Sensor Tower released the Store Intelligence data showing that the revenue App Store of Apple generates around 94 percent more than the Google play in the 3rd quarter. This is the biggest gap since at least 2014. 12$ billion (nearly Rs. 88,320 crores) revenue of Apple Store occupies around 66 percent of the total revenue generated from mobile apps in the 3rd quarter and that is a 23.2 percent growth compared to last year. In the case of Google Play, it saw an increase of 21.5 percent to $6.2 billion (nearly Rs. 45,630 crores) compared to last year. Sensor Tower reported that back in July, Google Play revenue generated in the first half of this year was $20.1 billion (nearly Rs. 1,48,000 crores) while the figure of App Store was close to double Google play figure with $38.5 billion (nearly Rs. 2,63,000 crores).

The figures released by Sensor Tower indicate that in the 3rd quarter, Google Play and App Store’s total spending got up to $18.2 billion (nearly Rs. 1,34,000 crores) and that figure increased by 22.7 percent compared to the figure of the year-ago quarter which is $14.8 billion (nearly Rs. 1,09,000 crores). Despite being quite far behind Apple Store in revenue generated, Google Play is still the top in the app installs figure with a 14.3 percent growth in the 3rd quarter growth, staying at $19.5 billion compared to $17.1 billion of last year. In the same quarter, around 7.6 billion new apps were installed which increased by 3.1 percent compared to the 7.3 billion first-time downloads figure in the same quarter last year. Across both Google Play and App Store, the figure in the total number of app installs increased by 10.9 percent and the combined figure of those two is 27.1 billion. That shows a 24.4 percent growth compared to last year.

For the top grossing apps, Sensor Tower reports that Netflix - an entertainment app emerged as the “world’s top-grossing, non-game mobile app” for three straight quarters in the 3rd quarter and it contributed $243.7 million (nearly Rs. 1,794 crores) to the revenue of App Store and Google Play from its in-app subscriptions. Following behind Netflix are Tinder as well as Tencent Video which stayed at second and third places on the results of Sensor Tower, respectively, from the 2nd quarter.

For the top grossing apps, Sensor Tower reports that Netflix - an entertainment app emerged as the “world’s top-grossing, non-game mobile app” for three straight quarters in the 3rd quarter and it contributed $243.7 million (nearly Rs. 1,794 crores) to the revenue of App Store and Google Play from its in-app subscriptions. Following behind Netflix are Tinder as well as Tencent Video which stayed at second and third places on the results of Sensor Tower, respectively, from the 2nd quarter.

In terms of download, Facebook is currently on top of the global download figure with four out of its top five apps for the 3rd quarter. It is interesting that TikTok - a short-video that acquired Musical.ly - a social karaoke app during the 3rd quarter, stayed in the fourth place with an incredible year-on-year growth of about 440 percent.

Alongside the growth of app downloads and revenues, mobile games also attracted many new users in the 3rd quarter. The report of Sensor Tower shows that spending in mobile games grew 14.9 percent during the 3rd quarter compared to the same period last year to $13.8 billion while its global revenue occupies 76 percent of the total app revenue across both platforms. Between the two platforms, the App Store occupies roughly 62 percent of the revenue generated from mobile games which is $8.5 billion (nearly 6,25,000 crores). And that is 12.8 percent higher than the figure in the same quarter last year. In contrast, the revenue generated from mobile games in Google Play increased by 18.4 percent compared to last year which stayed at $5.3 billion (nearly Rs. 39,000 crores). This figure represented 38 percent of all spending in games on both Google and App Store during the 3rd quarter.
In terms of individual app’s revenue, the leader in that figure was MOBA style game Honor of Kings developed by Tencent while Pokemon Go of Niantic stayed at the top of the Western-made game. In addition, despite not being listed in the Google Play, Fortnite Mobile of Epic Games still managed to grab the ninth place.
In terms of mobile game download, there were 9.5 billion downloads on both Google Play and App Store which increased by 2.2 percent in the last quarter compared to the same one last year. Google expectedly occupied the large portion of downloads which is 76 percent of all game installs, staying at 7.2 billion. And that figure was 2.4 percent higher than the same quarter last year. In the meantime, the download figure of the mobile game increased by 1.6 percent reaching 2.3 billion, 100 million higher compared to the same quarter last year. PUBG mobile, which is currently staying in the list of top-trending games by Tencent China, is among the five most download games but hyper-casual games were still the one continued to drive the downloads of game mobile and the most notable game on that genre is Helix Jump developed by Voodoo.