Global app downloads grew more than 10 percent year-over-year to 27.5 billion, making the first quarter of 2018 the industry’s best yet.
Combining worldwide revenue stemming from Google Play and iOS, AppAnnie reports that consumer spend grew 22 percent YoY to $18.4 billion. The company noted that additional money flows through third-party app stores, mobile commerce and in-app advertising, so the first quarter’s record numbers only scratch the surface.
Google Play led in app installation, exceeding 19.2 billion downloads in the first quarter. While iOS downloads trailed behind with an excess of 8.2 billion, Apple is closing the gap 10 percent quarter over quarter.
In addition, iOS had 85 percent higher sales than Android, despite the lower number of app downloads. App Annie attributes this gap to the number of free apps available in Google Play.
Consumer spend on Google Play grew 25 percent YoY in the first quarter, while iOS grew 20 percent YoY.
Growth in both app installation and revenue was driven across a number of categories including shopping, games, music & audio and entertainment.
On Google Play, Music & Audio and Entertainment apps experienced the largest market share growth of global consumer spending, both quarter over quarter and year over year.
“This speaks to the larger trend of consumers choosing to sign-up and pay for music streaming and video streaming subscriptions in apps,” Lexi Sydow, market insights manager for App Annie wrote with the findings.
The battle royale genre of mobile games, fueled by Playerunknown’s Underground, helped drive quarter-over-quarter growth across both Google Play and iOS stores.
The US saw the largest growth in market share of any country both quarter-over-quarter and YoY, App Annie observed. After the US, Japan and the Philippines saw the largest quarter-over-quarter market share growth of Google Play consumer spend.
For iOS downloads, India, Indonesia and Brazil saw the largest market share growth—a trend App Annie says they have seen play out in the last two years. The US, Russia and Turkey experienced large year-over-year growth in market share, as well.
