App Revenue & Market Share Insights in Mobile Industry

We’ve now added the revenue dimension to our Market Share feature of the Market Intelligence Add-On. You can now measure the market size of any set of countries and categories of your choice in terms of revenue on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. In a couple of clicks, you can easily compare the revenue share of each category and country within your market and you can discover what are the top revenue apps of your market as a whole and within each category and country. Read further to discover some mobile industry insights on top revenue categories, countries, apps and games.

US Mobile App Revenue Share by Category

We had a look at the top revenue categories in the US and compared the App and Play Store. On the US Play Store, the n°1 category in terms of revenue is the Social category with an estimated +$400k average daily revenue. This represents 20% of the total revenue from all Apps (Games excluded) in the US. Its Apple equivalent – Social Networking – is only the 4th top revenue category on the US App Store.

Photo & Video is the n°1 revenue category on the US App Store with an estimated $2.33M average daily revenue (21% of all App categories).

Entertainment is in the 2nd position in both stores with average daily revenue of $2.26M on the US App Store (20% of all App categories) and $240k on the US Play Store (12% of all App categories).

Top Apps with the highest Revenue Share in the US

We had a look at the top 10 apps that were generating the most revenue in the US Play and App Store. Although the results vary from one store to another, the type of apps with high revenue is similar, with a high number of entertaining and dating apps among the top 10.

US Mobile Game Revenue Share by Category

If we look at the mobile gaming industry, we find the game category that generates the most revenue in the US is the Strategy category on the Play Store with $1.15M average daily revenue (16% of the US Play Store mobile gaming sector) and the Action category on the App Store with an average daily revenue of $3.2M (14% of the US App Store mobile gaming sector).

That said, it is important to note that, in both Stores, the top game categories with the highest revenue share are very close to each other, with similar levels of average daily revenue and market share.

Top Games with the highest Revenue Share in the US

When it comes to the games that generate the highest revenue, we find many of the same games across the Play and App Store. The games Candy Crush Saga, Coin Master, Gardenscapes, Homescapes, Pokemon GO, and Roblox figure among the top revenue US games in both stores.

However, in the Play Store, these games never account for more than 1% of the total revenue share, whereas, in the App Store, the difference in revenue share between the games is more pronounced. Roblox accounts for 7% of the total revenue of the US App Store Games, Candy Crush Saga accounts for 4% and Clash of Clans and Coin Master account for 3%. They are the only games that have a revenue share above 2% on the App Store.

Differences in Game Download Share vs Revenue Share by Country

To continue our analysis, we had a look at the Game category across several major markets of the world: the US, the UK, Brazil, France, Germany, India, and Japan.

In each Store, we compared the market share of each country in terms of downloads vs. revenue. The most pronounced differences were on the Play Store. India and Brazil are by far the countries that account for the most number of game downloads on the Play Store, with a market share of 51% and 20% respectively. The United States is in the 3rd position with 15% of the sum of downloads from the game category across these countries.

When we look at the spread in terms of revenue, however, the results are very different. India and Brazil appear last with 4% and 1% of the total revenue share. Top revenue countries are the US (55% revenue share), Germany (19%), and France (10%).

In the App Store, the order of top download and revenue countries is relatively identical (except for France and Germany that switch positions). However, it is impressive to compare the share of the Japanese market in terms of downloads vs. revenue. When it comes to downloads, Japan accounts for 14% of the total downloads from the games category across these countries. When it comes to revenue, that share jumps up to 30%!

Top Games with the highest Revenue Share by Country

Finally, we had a look at the top revenue games in each country and store. One big common trend that we can observe across (nearly) all countries is that the share of revenue of these games is much leaner on the Play Store than on the App Store, with few games having a significantly higher share of revenue than others. There is an exception for India, where the games Garena Free Fire and PUBG Mobile totally outweigh any other game in the market when it comes to revenue. The games account for 37% and 28% of the revenue from the Indian mobile gaming industry respectively.

It’s also interesting to see how some games have managed to be among the top revenue games across all countries and stores while others are very specific to a certain country.

TLDR

We hope these insights have made you learn something today. Here’s a quick recap of our main takeaways:

• The top revenue US App Categories are quite different from one Store to another, and so is the revenue share from one category to another
• The top revenue US Game Categories are also different from one Store to another, however, their share of revenue is much closer to each other.
• Top revenue mobile apps in the US tend to be in the Entertainment or Dating category, while top revenue mobile games in the US tend to be mainly casual games
• On the Play Store, the countries that account for the highest share of downloads in the game category are very different from the countries that account for the highest share of revenue.
• On the App Store, Japan is the 2nd revenue-driving country in the game category.