China is leading the iOS app downloads surpassing Apple’s home turf, the United States. Though the US is still Apple’s largest revenue generator, China has become the largest iOS app consumer. According to stats compiled by analytics firm App Annie, China leads over the rest of the markets with absolute growth in the third quarter of this year.
On the other hand, its neighbour across the Himalayas India, along with Indonesia and Vietnam have together had a significant impact on the Google Play Store by sheer downloads, making Google Play outnumber iOS app downloads by 90%. This, however hasn’t had an astounding impact on the revenue generated from Android apps. This department is led by Apple, thanks to its top two revenue generators: the USA and China.
With China and India among the top three largest markets for smartphones, Asia has become the hotspot for smartphones. Mainly due to the higher sales of budget smartphones in emerging economies like India, where smartphone penetration is only 10-15%, and largely due to Apple’s stronghold in China, both Google Play and iOS apps benefited from the region.
India, importantly the world’s third largest market for smartphones, also happens to be the one among the top three largest markets by downloads for Facebook and WhatsApp and the third largest for Google Play.
The revenue generated by iOS app store in the third quarter is 80% higher than Google Play, which leads in terms of sheer downloads.
The success of iOS is largely contributed to the growth of social video apps and games; the latter leading the revenue with a large contribution followed by the frenzy around social video apps.
Although Asia, in particular China and India are major smartphone markets, they are yet to surpass US as the highest revenue generator for iOS App Store, which leads the charts followed by Japan. And while China is coming to terms with US growth, Indians are way too behind in terms of generating revenues for Apple by App Store purchases.
The favourable response received by the recent iPhone launch in China (which wasn’t the case with India) might be enough to take over the US in terms of revenue. But for that to happen, the smartphone penetration has to beef up along with internet connectivity.
