In line with that most had expected for the digital industry’s growth during COVID-19, new data from Sensor Tower suggests global app revenues hit a staggering $50B in first half of 2020. And it is a no-brainer, that this meteoric 23% Y-o-Y rise is partly fueled by stay-at-home orders globally, due to COVID-19
In terms of individual app store bifurcations, once again Apple led the revenues part while Android led the downloads section. Apple’s App Store generated an estimated $32.8 billion globally from in-app purchases, subscriptions, and premium apps and games in the first half of 2020. This figure is 24.7 percent more year-over-year from the $26.3 billion spent during the same period in 2019.
Interestingly, spending on Apple’s marketplace was nearly twice the estimated gross revenue on Google Play, which clocked in at $17.3 billion. That was up 21 percent Y/Y from the first half of 2019, when we estimate consumers spent $14.3 billion on Google Play.
In terms of specific apps, it was once again Tinder, which accounted for the most revenue in first half of 2020. The app generated an impressive $433 million in spending across both stores. This figure represents a dip of about 19 percent Y/Y, down from $532 million in 1H19. But that decrease could be due to people staying indoors or because Tinder made its premium feature Passport available for free to all users in April 2020.
Youtube came up 2nd with consumers spending $431 million globally. ByteDance’s TikTok, which recently faced a complete ban in its largest market India, ranked No. 3, generated $421 million on the App Store and Google Play in 1H20.
In terms of downloads, Google’s Play Store expectedly trumped Apple’s App Store. There were an estimated 71.5 billion first-time app installs during the first half of 2020, up 26.1 percent Y/Y. Apple’s App Store accounted for 18.3 billion of those, a figure that represents 22.8 percent growth Y/Y from 14.9 billion downloads from the App Store in the first half of 2019.
First-time app installs for 1H20 totalled 53.2 billion from Google Play, up 27.3 percent Y/Y from 41.8 billion in the same period in 2019. Similar to historic performance, the number of downloads from Google’s platform was nearly three times higher than those on the App Store.
