As detailed in our app revenues market post, Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store both earn a majority of revenue from games, accounting more than half across both stores. It...

In September 2022, QQ Music was the top-grossing iPhone music app in the Apple App Store worldwide. The streaming service generated roughly **** million U.S. dollars in revenues from iOS users. NetEase Cloud Music ranked second, generating **** million U.S. dollars in revenues. YouTube Music was the third-most successful music app with approximately **** million U.S. dollars in revenues from global users.

In June 2023, Disney+ generated approximately 70.6 million U.S. dollars in global revenues through the Google Play Store. With over 50.7 million U.S. dollars, HBO Max ranked second, while TikTok ranked third with around 38 million U.S. dollars in revenues from Android users worldwide. The majority of high-grossing apps in the measured month were gaming apps.

Google Play Store apps overview As of the first quarter of 2021, Google Play Store was the leading app store worldwide by number of available apps. In 2021, Google Play Store saw more than 111 billion app downloads, while users generated nearly 48 billion U.S. dollars in consumer spending on mobile apps on the platform. In the first quarter of 2021, the most popular category of apps on the platform were gaming apps, followed by education apps, and business apps.

App revenue There are many different monetization models for mobile apps, the most common ones are free apps with in-app purchases, paid apps, paid apps with in-app purchases, and subscriptions. From humble beginnings, the mobile gaming market has flourished: gaming apps accounted for 83 percent of gross app revenues in the Google Play Store in 2020. In comparison, social media apps only accounted for three percent of app revenues. The Apple App Store paints a similar picture with gaming apps again accounting for the lion's share of revenue, albeit to a lesser extent than in the Google Play store.

In June 2025, ***************** was the top-grossing gaming app in the Google Play Store worldwide. The survival game title generated ** million U.S. dollars in revenues from Android users. ************ was the second-most-grossing gaming app title with approximately *****million U.S. dollars in revenue during that month.

The pendulum swung in 2022 with app downloads stagnating, after two years of solid growth under the pandemic. In 2023, some categories saw growth while others continued to stagnate, as users shifted...

In September 2022, OfferUp was the top-grossing iPhone shopping app in the Apple App Store worldwide. The shopping platform generated over *** thousand U.S. dollars in revenues from iOS users. Marketplace was the second-most successful shopping app with roughly *** thousand U.S. dollars in revenue from global users.

As of the second quarter of 2024, gaming apps were the most popular category available in the Apple App Store, making up a share of approximately 12 percent of all iOS apps in hosted in the platform. Business apps were the second-most popular category in the Apple App Store with a share of 10.11 percent of active apps being apps in this category. Utilities apps were the third most popular iOS app category, accounting for a total of over 9.73 percent of active apps. iOS apps in the Apple App Store As nowadays it is inconceivable to imagine smartphones without the abundance of mobile applications, the number of available iOS mobile apps distributed via the Apple App Store has consistently grown, reaching the peak of 2.2 million available apps during the first quarter of 2021. As of the beginning of 2022, the highest-ranking mobile apps on the results page of the Apple App Store had an average of 31.7 thousand reviews, and received an average rating of 3.35 stars. Mobile gaming on the Apple App Store Gaming apps are the most popular apps based on availability and often rank as the most downloaded and highest-grossing apps. In 2024, The Honor of Kings was the top grossing gaming app, grossing more than nine million U.S. dollars worldwide. The average price for a gaming app is about 47 cents, while the average app price is just under one U.S. dollar. Common app revenue models include free apps with in-app purchases, paid apps without in-app purchases, and paid apps with in-app purchases. Gaming apps, which frequently generate revenue through in-game item purchases, were the top-grossing category on the Apple App Store, generating almost 52 billion U.S. dollars from global users in 2021.

In September 2022, Pandora was the top-grossing music and audio app in the Google Play Store worldwide, with around 6.45 million U.S. dollars in revenues. Apple Music was the second-most successful audio and music app with 645 thousand U.S. dollars in revenues from global users.

In September 2022, TikTok was the top-grossing iPhone entertainment app in the Apple App Store worldwide. The short-video social platform generated over ** million U.S. dollars in revenues from iOS users. The mobile app of video streaming platform Disney+ ranked second, with approximately ** million U.S. dollars in revenues, while the Tencent Video app ranked third with **** million U.S. dollars in revenues.

In February 2025, ************** was the top-grossing gaming app for iPhone worldwide. The mobile game title generated close to *** million U.S. dollars in revenues from iPhone users. *********** was the second-most-grossing gaming app title with approximately *** million U.S. dollars in revenue during that month.

The food delivery market has seen significant growth over the past decade. Led by platform-to-consumer services, such as DoorDash and Uber Eats, food delivery has expanded from takeaways to anything...

In September 2022, the Roblox mobile gaming platform was the top-grossing iPad app in the Apple App Store worldwide, generating approximately 42 million U.S. dollars in revenues. The Candy Crush Saga came in second, with over 26.5 million U.S. dollars. DoubleDown ranked third, with the gaming app generating close to 10 million U.S. dollars in revenues from iPad users.

Mobile games make up the majority of video games released each year, with thousands of new additions to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store every year. By the mid-2010s, mobile games had...

Apple is one of the most influential and recognisable brands in the world, responsible for the rise of the smartphone with the iPhone. Valued at over $2 trillion in 2021, it is also the most valuable...

In February 2025, Roblox was the top-grossing gaming app for iPad worldwide. The creative gaming platform title generated more than 21.7 million U.S. dollars in revenues from iPad users. Candy Crush Saga was the second-most-grossing gaming app title with approximately 9.9 million U.S. dollars in revenue during that month.

The graph shows a comparison for app downloads worldwide from 2018 to 2024, using data from Sensor Tower and data.ai. Global app downloads have plateued in recent years, even declining, after seeing strong growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. For 2024 136 billion unique dowloads per user account were recorded. Why the difference? Source methodology explains the gap The discrepancy arises from significant differences in the methodolgy used by the sources to aggregate and generate the data. Sensor Tower reports only unique downloads per user account, excluding app updates, re-downloads, and installations on multiple devices by the same user. In contrast, data.ai includes these additional activities as well as downloads from third-party Android stores and a broader geographic scope, resulting in substantially higher total counts. As a result, Sensor Tower's numbers better reflect new user acquisition, while data.ai's encompass all market activity and total engagement. Despite stagnating downloads user spending is growing While the number of downloads is leveling off, consumer spending on in-app purchases and related revenue has grown in 2024 to 150 billion U.S. dollars, up from aroud 130 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. While gaming remains the highest grossing app category overall, the growth was driven by other categories. The entertainment, photo & video, productivity, and social networking categories ech grew by at least one billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2024 compared to the previous year.

The Chinese fashion e-commerce giant Shein Group has surged to prominence. Founded in 2008 as ZZKKO, it quickly evolved into the world's largest fashion retailer in 2022. Its app attracted more than 113 million downloads worldwide between January 1 and August 31, 2025. Faster and cheaper The online-only fast-fashion company has a unique business model. Enabled by algorithms and data analytics, its swift production and fashion trend prediction abilities have set it apart in the fast fashion e-commerce world. Its algorithm-driven supply chain enables it to reduce the production time to 7 days and offer thousands of new items on its site every week at much lower price levels than its competitors. Behind the low-price tags The fashion retailer also collaborates with numerous fashion bloggers to harness platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Combined with its adept use of social media marketing, SHEIN achieved a staggering 38 billion U.S. dollars in gross merchandise value in 2024. Despite its rapid growth and popularity, Shein's reputation is marred by a barrage of controversies, ranging from labor rights violations and trademark disputes to environmental concerns to health and safety issues.

In June 2024, Fitbit was the top-grossing health and fitness app in the Google Play Store worldwide. The platform generated over 4.76 million U.S. dollars in revenues from Android users. Strava was the second highest-grossing health and fitness app with roughly 3.1 million U.S. dollars in revenues from global Android users in the examined month. MyFitnessPal ranked third, having generated around 2.8 million U.S. dollars in revenues in the last examined month.

Chinese discount ecommerce app Temu has taken the United States and United Kingdom by storm, as the newest Chinese-based challenger aiming to saturate the market with products at under half the price...

eBay is an e-commerce platform, at first only providing customer-to-customer auction services, expanding into business-to-consumer shortly afterwards. In the 2000’s, eBay went on a spending...