Google Play was used twice the number of times Apple’s App Store was used for downloading apps in 2015. This marks a huge achievement for Google as its downloads exceeded those of Apple by 100%. In 2014, the figure was 60%, suggesting that Google Play not only got bigger in 2015 but also grew at a faster rate than Apple’s App Store.
Google bigger but Apple wealthier
App Annie just released its retrospective report for 2015, throwing a lot of fascinating numbers, including the numbers for the two biggest app stores. Though Google Play is king when it comes to app store downloads, Apple’s App Store generated more revenue. From 70% in 2014, this number grew to 75% for 2015, indicating that the iOS-Android gap is also widening.
Such numbers prove again that Google Play is a lot bigger than Apple’s App Store, and iOS developers make a higher income than Android developers, and for this reason Apple, with its cut, too makes more than the Internet firm.
There is another way of putting this. It is true that iOS’ market share is less than that of Android, but its users have a higher tendency of spending money. This is something mobile developers are well aware of, and therefore they use it to their advantage.
Other interesting tidbits
App Annie’s 2015 report offers a lot more interesting tidbits. Emerging markets, namely Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Mexico, played a very important role in the Play Store’s success. Countries like China, the U.S. and Japan helped in driving the revenue of Apple’s iOS App Store. Games and apps contributed in the same proportion as they did in 2014 at 90% of revenues on the Play Store, while to the iOS App Store, they contributed 75%.
Google is unable to shake Apple’s dominant position in some markets. For example, the U.S. is at fourth place in terms of iOS downloads and revenue, but for the Play Store, it’s not even in the top 10. The number of Apple Watch apps went up from 3,000 in April to 14,000 by December, the report adds.
All the top five apps, in terms of monthly active users, belonged to Google or Facebook. There was no mention of the Windows Phone Store in App Annie’s report. According to VentureBeat, the report didn’t mention Windows once.
