A new study – and we had a few of them these days – looking into application stores and their respective app ecosystem is available, showing some interesting numbers for the two main players in the business, Google and Apple.
App Annie Intelligence has been tracking a variety of apps to asses the performance of the Google Play Store and the App Store, and has put up a report about the current state of app downloads and app revenues.
In short, Google Play has seen an impressive increase in revenue in October 2012, up 311% compared to January 2012, but it’s still unable to match Apple’s App Store, which raked in four times more cash despite growing only 12.9% in the same period. And while in October alone Google Play revenue has grown 17.9% and App Store revenue contracted 0.7% – most likely compared to September numbers, as App Annie’s initial PDF report can be confusing – Apple’s digital store is still the leader.
Since the report has been issued, Apple has disputed App Annie’s numbers saying that it grew over 200% and not just 12.9% as the report says, which is why we postponed the story, waiting for further clarification from the later. App Annie revealed what we thought all along, that the two entities were apparently looking at growth differently and that both companies were right in their own way. Apple has grown over 200% year-over-year, so Apple is right, but App Annie compared growth using the available numbers from January 2012 and October 2012 which show only a 12.9% growth for the period, so App Annie is right too.
Moving on to other findings of the study, here are some other interesting numbers from the report:
- 10% more free downloads are available from App Store compared to Google Play
- 48% app downloads growth in the last five months for Google Play compared to 3.3% growth for App Store
- In October, 26% of iOS app downloads came from USA followed by China (15%), Japan (6%), United Kingdom (6%) and the rest of the world (47%). Revenues for the same month were as follows: USA (33%), Japan (14%), UK (7%), Australia (5%) and the rest of the world (40%)
- In October 21% of Android app downloads came from USA followed by South Korea (11%), India (6%), Japan (6%) and the rest of the world (57%). As for Google Play revenues for the same month, the top five is as follows: Japan (29%), USA (26%), South Korea (19%), UK (4%), rest of the world (23%).
The report is also looking at the most important players in the mobile game, with Apple and Google topping the top iOS publishers by free downloads, followed by companies like EA, Gameloft and Facebook. Over on Google Play, the top five free app publishers are Google, Facebook, Rovio, Go Launcher and Outfit7.
When it comes to revenue, the top grossing iOS publishers chart is lead by EA, Supercell and Zynga, while on Google Play, DeNA, COLOPL and GungHo Online are the top three companies by revenues. Needless to say that all these six companies sell games via the App Store and Google Play Store, respectively.
What Android apps are you downloading? Are they mostly free or paid apps? How many apps do you usually have on your Android device?
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