iOS apps earn 85 percent more revenue than Android, based on data from the latest App Annie Market Index. The company culled information across both Apple's App Store and Google Play using its proprietary App Annie Intelligence system.
- While Apple's platform may make the most money, Google Play worldwide downloads now exceed iOS App Store downloads by around 45 percent. App Annie attributed this to growth in emerging markets such as Russia, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey.
- iOS revenue in China grew 70 percent quarter-over-quarter and came in second to the U.S. in download volumes.
- Google Play revenue in the U.S. grew approximately 55 percent quarter-over-quarter, significantly outpacing other countries. However, the United Kingdom also saw substantial growth in the first quarter of 2014, gaining around 35 percent quarter-over-quarter, the second quarter of consecutive growth from that region.
- Games continued to dominate downloads and revenue, accounting for around 75 percent of revenue on the iOS App Store and approaching 90 percent of revenue on Google Play.
"App Annie Intelligence shows that Games led growth in both downloads and revenue on both app stores, with China the leading contributor on iOS and the United States driving Games growth on Google Play," the report said. "However, growth also occurred outside of Games on Google Play, helping narrow the revenue gap with iOS."
According to App Annie, one of the categories that's disrupting the traditional dominance of games as an app category across both platforms is messaging apps. For instance, on iOS things like WhatsApp would fall under "social networking" and on Google Play they would be classified as "communication," but there may come a time when they need to be broken out more granularly.
App Annie said apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram all led to major downloads and revenue, and in some cases there was a home-court advantage. For instance, LINE is strong in Taiwan, while Swiss-owned Threema is proving popular in Germany. The industry may even see how messaging apps and mobile game growth go hand-in-hand. App Annie said four of the five top-grossing games in China were published on Tencent's WeChat.
For more:
- to see the complete App Annie Market Index, click here.
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