It’s a bit like the American dream of rags-to-riches: anyone hoping to get rich by developing apps faces not only hard work, but obviously a good deal of luck, too. New figures from AppFigures, an analytics firm specializing in app stores, show that only a few make a lot of money from apps – and app downloads have clearly passed their peak. Most of the money is now made from in-app subscriptions.
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At first glance, developments in 2024 look quite positive. Total app sales increased to $127 billion, corresponding to a 15.7 percent increase over the previous year. Analysts, based on their own surveys, said the positive growth was primarily driven by Apple’s App Store. The App Store recorded sales of $91.6 billion, up 24 percent from the previous year. However, rival Google’s Play Store declined marginally by 1.5 percent to $35.7 billion. The huge difference in sales is still shocking, even though Google’s platform has a much larger reach on Android devices.
Download numbers are decreasing
Despite the increase in sales, download numbers are declining for all, according to AppFigures. There were 28.3 billion downloads of iOS apps, down 1.1 percent, and 81.4 billion downloads of Android apps, down 2.6 percent from last year. Positive growth can be seen in Mexico, where downloads have increased by 225 million. Sales in Brazil increased by 73 percent.
The switch from one-time app purchases to in-app subscriptions, supported exclusively by Apple, is increasingly bearing fruit, according to data from AppFigures. About half of sales now come from subscriptions. However, only five percent of all apps offer subscriptions. The top 10 apps alone accounted for 13.7 percent of total sales, compared to 12.5 percent last year.
Less spam apps on Google Play Store
Another positive observation: The number of newly published apps on Google Play has decreased by 60 percent – this is due to Google’s efforts to raise quality standards to keep out spam apps.
AppFigures has not provided any information about the sources of the numbers in the context of the current publication. In addition to Apple and Google’s publications, based on previous information, analytics data from the company’s customers as well as other data from third-party databases and SDKs are likely to play a major role again. Apple itself does not provide such comprehensive information about App Store numbers.
(MKI)
