It's a bit like the American dream of going from rags to riches: Anyone who hopes to get rich by developing an app not only has hard work ahead of them, but also obviously needs a large portion of luck. New figures from the analyst firm Appfiguren, which specializes in app stores, show that only a few make a lot of money with apps – and that disclosure has exceeded its peak in app downloads. Most of the money is now made with in-app subscriptions.
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At first glance, developments in 2024 look quite positive. Total app sales rose to $127 billion, which corresponds to growth of 15.7 percent compared to the previous year. The positive development is primarily driven by Apple's App Store, say the analysts based on their own surveys. The App Store reported sales of $91.6 billion, 24 percent more than in the previous year. However, Google's competitors suffered a 1.5 percent disadvantage in the Play Store to $35.7 billion. What is still striking is the enormous gap in sales, even though Google's platform has a very high reach on Android devices.
Download payments declining
Despite increased sales, download numbers are declining for all app figures. There were 28.3 billion iOS app downloads, down 1.1 percent, and 81.4 billion Android app downloads, down 2.6 percent year over year. Positive developments were noted in Mexico, where downloads increased by 225 million. In Brazil there was sales growth of 73 percent.
The change from one-time app purchases to in-app subscriptions, which is particularly supported by Apple, is increasingly bearing fruit, according to the app figure figures. Almost half of sales now come from subscriptions. Only offer five percent of all apps, albeit subscriptions at all. The top 10 apps alone accounted for 13.7 percent of total sales, compared to 12.5 percent in the previous year.
Fewer spam apps in the Google Play Store
Another positive observation: The number of newly released apps on Google Play has decreased by 60 percent – this is due to Google's increase in quality requirements 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 publications by Apple and Google, based on previous information, analytics data from the company's customers is likely to play a major role again, as well as other data from third-party databases and SDKs. Apple itself does not provide such extensive insights into the App Store's numbers.
(mki)
