The top 1% of developers completely dominates the App Store
But new research from Sensor Tower shows just how skewed the market is to the big players.
According to Sensor Tower's first-quarter estimates, the top 1% of publishers that produce paid apps (or apps with in-app purchases) collect 94% of revenue from the platform.
That works out to 623 top publishers collecting $1.34 billion of the $1.43 billion in revenue estimated to come from the App Store during the period.
Those publishers are household names: Supercell, which makes Clash of Clans, Machine Zone, which makes Game of War Fire Age, and streaming service providers like Spotify and Netflix.
Additionally, the top 1 percent of publishers garnered 70% of the downloads during the period. Sensor Tower estimates 1.38 billion app downloads took place during the first quarter.
Ultimately, the new research underscores a trend that smaller developers are increasingly grappling with: it's pretty hard to be an indie developer on Apple's platform.
Here are the charts:
