Apple got a head start on Google with the App Store, but over the last year, Google Play has continued to make up ground, not only with its offerings of apps, but also the amount of revenue it generates.
In Q4 2012, Apple’s App Store was still seeing four times as many sales as Google Play was, but fast forward to Q1 2013 and the App Store is now only making 2.6 times as much as Google Play.
App Annie released its newest study on app stores this morning and reported that Google Play is growing significantly faster than the App Store for both downloads and revenues. Google Play was able to reach close to 90% of the number of App Store downloads in Q1 2013, but the App Store is still making more money off apps than Google is able to at this time.
The biggest growth driver for revenue was games, as it accounted for 70% of the revenue generated in the App Store and 80% in Google Play. The U.S. is still responsible for most of iOS’s growth in revenues, but China is starting to become a more important factor, while Russia actually played a big role in Google Play’s growth.
Photo and Video apps are now the third largest category in iOS downloads, while Education apps are the fourth largest revenue generators. The top five countries for downloads in Google Play are U.S. South Korea, India, Russia, and Japan. For iOS the top five countries are U.S. China, UK, Germany and Japan.
Source: App Annie
