World Cup pushes app downloads to all-time high

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App Store icon
Business is booming for the App Store.
Photo: PhotoAtelier/Flickr

The second quarter of 2018 proved to be the most lucrative period for app developers ever.

Both the Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store saw a record number of new app installs during Q2 2018 and shattered revenue records in the process.

App Annie
Android is dominating

Over 28.4 billion app downloads were had worldwide across both iOS and Google Play, according to a new report from App Annie. Total downloads were up 15 percent compared to the same quarter last year. Even more impressive is the fact that the number didn’t include app updates or reinstalls.

Spending on apps was also up during the quarter. A whopping $18.5 billion was raked in by Google Play and the App Store. That topped the precious record of $18.4 billion spent in a quarter off 27.5 billion downloads.

Google Play took the lion share of downloads with over 20 billion apps downloads happening on the Android platform.

India was the biggest driver of app downloads on Android. Indonesia also played a big role. On iOS, the U.S., Russia and Saudi Arabia saw the largest growth.

Games, video editors and sports applications were the biggest drivers of growth. The World Cup certainly helped propel sports apps to new heights. The top 5 live TV streaming apps that offered World Cup coverage grew 77 percent during the first week of the tournament.

The World Cup helped fuboTV grow by a shocking 713 percent, with 309k new users in the U.S. Hulu saw the weakest growth with an increase of 18 percent.

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