Users spend $133 billion on apps as Apple’s App Store continues to lead revenue shares

• Spendings across mobile apps have seen a rise this year.
• Apple’s App Store continues to lead the revenue shares.
• Users spend $133 billion this year on in-app purchases, premium apps, and subscriptions.

The spending on mobile apps has begun to normalise after the COVID-19 setback last year as 2021 is expected to see a total of $133 billion spent across Google Play and Apple App Store, a 19.7% increase from $111.1 billion in 2020. These spendings include in-app purchases, premium apps, and subscriptions across the two app stores.

According to Sensor Tower’s research, App Store continues to see more revenue than Google Play. In 2021, App Store is expected to make $85.1 billion in revenue, a year-on-year growth of 17.7% from $72.3 billion in 2020. Google Play also saw a massive growth this year $47.9 billion in revenue, a 23.5% from $38.8 billion last year. According to the report, the growth in revenue was due to the market recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic took a toll last year and we can only expect it to grow further next year.

Top apps
According to the research report, Tiktok once again maintained its position as the top revenue app of the year. Other apps that had high revenues include YouTube, Piccoma, Tinder, Disney+, Google One, etc. Tiktok was at the top of apps in terms of App Store revenues while Google One led the charts among apps on Google Play.

In terms of downloads, the top apps have seen a dip since last year. Tiktok remained at the top despite being banned in India, which was its biggest market. The short-video platform saw 745.9 million installs, a dip from 980.7 million installs in 2020.

On Google’s platform, Facebook was the most downloaded app with 500.9 million installs on the platform itself, and 624.9 million installs across both platforms, a dip from 707.8 million last year.

Apart from Tiktok and Facebook, other top apps include Meta-owned Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.

Gaming apps
Mobile game spending has seen a growth in 2021, reaching $89.6 billion from across the two platforms, a 12.6% rise from $79.6 billion in 2020. It accounted for 67.4% of all in-app spending this year, which is lower than the gaming apps revenue share in 2019, 74.1%.

In terms of revenue, PUBG Mobile remained at the top of overall revenue among gaming apps. Honor of Kings from Tencent made the most revenue this year on the App Store with $2.9 billion. While Moon Active’s Coin Master was at the top of revenue among apps on Google Play with nearly $912 million.

As for downloads, Garena Free Fire was the most popular app overall. It was the most installed app on Google Play, while PUBG Mobile top the charts among all the gaming apps on Apple’s platform.

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