Google Play Doubles App Store in Downloads But App Store Dominates in Revenue [Chart]

Google Play saw a huge increase in downloads in 2015 thanks to first-time device owners in emerging markets, reports App Annie. However, Apple's App Store continues to dominate in revenue generated.

In last year’s Retrospective, we noted a 60% download lead of Google Play over iOS. This widened to nearly 100% in 2015. This massive disparity could mark the beginning of major changes in mobile marketing, including substantial increases of Android’s share of mobile ad spend. Google Play’s significant increase in worldwide downloads came largely from emerging markets (a fact that we noted in our Q1 2015 and Q3 2015 Market Index reports); the top five contributors were Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Mexico. Together, these countries accounted for nearly half of Google Play’s year-on-year download growth.

Both stores had significant gains in revenue; however, iOS continues to outpace Google Play. The App Store saw strong revenue growth driven by China, the United States, and Japan, which contributed nearly 90% of the App Store's year-on-year growth.


China saw especially impressive growth in App Store revenue, a fact that Apple called out in its Q4 earnings call. The relative contributions of games and apps did not deviate from their 2014 levels; games continued to contribute 90% of revenue on Google Play and 75% on the iOS App Store.

App Annie believes there is still plenty of room for growth in the app economy. Device penetration is low in emerging markets and revenue will continue to grow as the audience gets bigger and various monetization options gain further traction.

Check out the charts below...

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