App Store nearly doubles Google's Play Store revenue in Q3 despite boom in Android app ins...
Revenues generated by Apple's App Store yet again nearly doubled those of Google's Play Store in the third quarter of 2020, according to new data from Sensor Tower.
Citing preliminary estimates from its own Store Intelligence solution, Sensor Tower reports consumer spending on in-app purchases, subscriptions and one-time app purchases rose to $19 billion globally on the App Store, up 31% year-over-year. By comparison, Google's Play Store grew 34% over the same period to net $10.3 billion.
On the whole, app buyers spent 32% more than the $22.2 billion generated by the two app stores in the third quarter of 2019, while installs grew 23.3% to hit 36.5 billion.
As usual, Apple's majority take of global revenue was achieved with much fewer installs. The App Store ticked up 2.5% with an estimated 8.2 billion installs, while Play Store growth boomed with 28.3 billion installs, up 31% on the year. Despite the huge jump in first-time installs, Android lags far behind iOS as a money-generating platform.
Sensor Tower found that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to positively impact the app market, a phenomenon first witnessed at the end of the second quarter in July.
Social media upstart TikTok was the highest earning non-game app in the third quarter, followed by YouTube, Tinder, Tencent Video and Disney+. TikTok also led installs, with Facebook, Zoom, WhatsApp and Instagram following.
Game apps saw similar increases during the quarter, with combined spending increasing 26.7% to reach $20.9 billion. The App Store led this category and generated $12.4 billion from in-game spending, up 24% year-over-year. Google Play generated $8.5 billion in revenue, up 30.8% on the year.
Sensor Tower's report is merely an estimate of actual sales. Apple does not break out metrics from its App Store, but in June highlighted a study that found the ecosystem to have facilitated more than $500 billion in commerce during 2019. It should be noted that physical goods and services accounted for a large bulk -- $413 billion -- of that figure.
Citing preliminary estimates from its own Store Intelligence solution, Sensor Tower reports consumer spending on in-app purchases, subscriptions and one-time app purchases rose to $19 billion globally on the App Store, up 31% year-over-year. By comparison, Google's Play Store grew 34% over the same period to net $10.3 billion.
On the whole, app buyers spent 32% more than the $22.2 billion generated by the two app stores in the third quarter of 2019, while installs grew 23.3% to hit 36.5 billion.
As usual, Apple's majority take of global revenue was achieved with much fewer installs. The App Store ticked up 2.5% with an estimated 8.2 billion installs, while Play Store growth boomed with 28.3 billion installs, up 31% on the year. Despite the huge jump in first-time installs, Android lags far behind iOS as a money-generating platform.
Sensor Tower found that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to positively impact the app market, a phenomenon first witnessed at the end of the second quarter in July.
Social media upstart TikTok was the highest earning non-game app in the third quarter, followed by YouTube, Tinder, Tencent Video and Disney+. TikTok also led installs, with Facebook, Zoom, WhatsApp and Instagram following.
Game apps saw similar increases during the quarter, with combined spending increasing 26.7% to reach $20.9 billion. The App Store led this category and generated $12.4 billion from in-game spending, up 24% year-over-year. Google Play generated $8.5 billion in revenue, up 30.8% on the year.
Sensor Tower's report is merely an estimate of actual sales. Apple does not break out metrics from its App Store, but in June highlighted a study that found the ecosystem to have facilitated more than $500 billion in commerce during 2019. It should be noted that physical goods and services accounted for a large bulk -- $413 billion -- of that figure.
Comments
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App Store nearly doubles Google's Play Store revenue”
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/app-store-reportedly-earned-twice-as-much-as-the-google-play-store-in-q3-2020.2258243/?post=28978730#post-28978730
1. Google Play does not operate in China.
2. China is the #1 market for mobile apps.
Lots of independent analyses have shown that were Google Play in China, the total revenue would easily surpass the App Store. Of course, iOS would still have a huge per device/per customer average though. And where the main revenue driver for Google Play would still be IAP/free-to-play games while enterprise/professional/productivity and other premium apps as well as subscription services would still have much more revenue.
One thing that I have noticed is that Sundar Pichai's huge effort to invest in India - his initiative to train 1 million Android programmers in India as well as targeting that market with Android Go hardware - hasn't resulted in much revenue for Google Play yet.
I noted earlier MacRumors has a much more comprehensive detailing of the charts. Worth taking a look. Linked above.
I'm really shocked.
A developer developing Google apps doesn't mean that their Google app will automatically work on Amazon devices using Fire OS or on "Android" devices in China. (That's if they can gain access to the "Android" devices in China.) It might take as much effort to recode their Google apps, as it does to recode for iOS. If they want to develop for Amazon devices, they must develop for Fire OS and use the Amazon App Store. Otherwise there is no support from Amazon. And I have no idea as to what it would take to develop apps for China "Android" devices as they have nearly zero support for any Google apps that runs on what Google consider "Android".
And then you got the issue that in order to reach over 80% of Android users, a developer might have to make their apps work for 2 or 3 versions of Google Android. Whereas with iOS, just developing for the newest iOS is often all that is needed to reach over 80% of iOS devices. This is added cost for Google Android developers.
I'm sure that you might be correct in saying that as a whole, "Android" developers makes as much developing for "Android" as they would for iOS. But only if you count developing for Fire OS and for China devices with their Android fork, as developing for "Android". For sure, Google don't. As far as Google is concern, Amazon devices, China "Android" devices and any device using a fork of Android that don't support the Google Play Store, are not "Android" devices.
Plenty of wealthy people don't have iPhones either.
And what does 'afford an iPhone' even mean?
Surely you could swap that out for any flagship phone on the market?
Less money than what?
Your income
So yeah articles like this that omit that Google Play vs the App Store IS NOT a one on one comparison are giving a distorted picture. It shows that Google is missing out on a vast amount of revenue by choosing not to do business in China. If they were, they would easily have a bigger valuation than Microsoft, who incidentally sells tons of Office and Windows licenses in China, including an edition made specifically for the Chinese government.
Still iOS earns us about the same amount of money, on far fewer devices.
Basically, Google Apps are the apps that Google develop to harness it's users data for their targeted advertising. Targeted advertising is how Google makes over 80% of their revenue. Google Apps are mostly "free" services for devices that are running Google Android. They do not all necessary work or work properly, on devices running an Android fork. Google do not consider devices running an Android fork as "Android" devices. Though marketing people do. "Android" is a trademark of Google and the Android name can only be use on devices running the Android that supports Google Apps.
Thus Amazon devices are said to be running on Fire OS as the Fire OS is an Android fork and do not include any Google Apps and might not support all of the Google Apps. Nor do Amazon offer any support for them if you were to load them into an Amazon device, by side loading in the Google Play Store. And I don't think Google would offer any support if you were to install a Google App into a device not running Google Android.
In you develop an app for Android, it might very well run on all devices with any forks of Android. But if you incorporate any of the Google Apps into your app, it might not run or not run properly on devices running on an Android fork. And there will probably be no support from either the device maker or Google. But with Android being open source, there are many developers in the community that are more than wiling to help.