According to a new report by Sensor Tower, Apple users continue to spend more on apps than their Android counterparts. While Google Play had significantly more downloads, the App Store reigns supreme in revenue generation.
The report covers the first quarter of 2024 and reveals an overall solid mobile app market. Consumer spending grew 9.5% year over year, reaching $35.8 billion.
Interestingly, non-game apps are driving this growth with a staggering 19.4% increase, while mobile games saw a more modest 2.9% rise, though still surpassing the $20 billion mark for the first time in two years.
Looking at platform specifics, Apple’s App Store continues to be the revenue champion. It raked in $24.6 billion, reflecting an 11.5% growth year-on-year. Meanwhile, the Google Play Store grew slower at 5.3%, reaching $11.2 billion. This trend holds for mobile games as well. Apple secured $13 billion in-game revenue during the quarter, a nearly 6% increase, while Google Play remained flat at $7.3 billion.
On the other hand, Google Play holds the upper hand in download volume with 25.6 billion downloads, but this represents a 5.2% decrease compared to the previous year. Despite this decrease, Google Play still had more than triple the downloads of the App Store, which reached 8.4 billion in Q1 2024, or a modest 2.1% year-on-year improvement.
The United States continues to be the biggest market for app spending, with $12.4 billion, followed by China at $6.0 billion.
Entertainment apps are the top earners, generating $4.1 billion in Q1 2024, an 18% year-on-year increase.
Although Google Play may see more app installations, Apple users are demonstrably willing to spend more on apps, mainly in non-gaming categories like entertainment.
This spending pattern might be related to the users themselves. Not everyone can afford an iPhone, which makes it a premium device. Hence, most iPhone users are likely doing better financially. On the other hand, Androids come in all price ranges. No wonder Android has 3x more downloads than iPhones but less spending.
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