Apple Apps Dominates Phone App Industry

By Jenn Loro - 21 Apr '16 11:08AM

Apple App Store sells more than Google Play Store.

Although Google Play expectedly registered double the volume of app downloads as Android dominates the global smartphone market, rival iOS App Store generated twice the amount of revenue, according to App Annie's App Annie Index: Market Q1 2016.

Mobile games purchase, concentrated in games such as Fantasy Westward Journey, Westward Journey Online, Hero Moba and The Legend of Mir 2, pushed the revenue growth. This was especially driven by China's download upswell, who surpassed Japan in the second spot for iOS revenue. Maintaining a good 30% lead, the U.S. is still App Store's top profit maker.

Increase in mobile entertainment and music streaming subscriptions - particularly Netflix and Spotify in the U.S., and Tencent Video and QQ Music in China - also helped rake in earnings. Netflix and Spotify both lead worldwide for video and music streaming apps on iOS.

According to the Telegraph, "Apple confirmed developers have now made close to $40 billion since the Store's launch in 2008, one third of which was generated in the past year alone. The company claimed that this has led to the creation of 1.9 million jobs in the US, 1.2 million in Europe and 1.4 million in China."

The upset in revenue, Ewan Spence opines in Forbes, is because of Apple's efficiency, by design, at "extracting money from its user base" and keeping them spending.

Apple users, especially U.S. Apple users, are said to be loyal customers.

Kantar, the research, data and insight consultancy company, reported in January 2016 that despite overall declining global sales, Apple is still the leading brand in the U.S. and China.

"Apple loyalty in the U.S. is at its highest since 2012, reinforcing the fact that customer retention is not an issue," reported Kantar chief researcher Carolina Milanesi at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.