Top iPhone apps still pull in vastly more money than Android‘s best sellers

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iPhone App Store
The Apple App Store brings in much more revenue than its Android rival.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

The 100 biggest software developers on the Apple App Store took in a whopping 64 percent more than the highest-earning Android app makers during the first the first three months of this year.

And the iPhone devs saw a 12 percent average year-over-year increase in revenue during Q1, according to a market research firm.

SensorTower analyzed the revenue of the 100 biggest-selling App Store publishers, and announced today that each of them, on average, took in $83.8 million in the initial quarter of 2019. When the analysts did the same for the top Google Play developers, the average was $51 million.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. The top makers of iPhone and iPad software store have been taking in approximately 64 percent more than even the best-selling Android publishers for years.

Apple and Google app store revenue Q1 2019
Figuring out which mobile software store brings in more revenue isn’t rocket science.

iPhone users willing to pay for productivity apps

The difference is even more dramatic for non-gaming applications. Each of the 100 top-earning iOS developers took in, on average, $23.3 million for this category. The equivalent group of Android devs pulled in $7.0 million, according to SensorTower.

“Apple’s App Store remains the leading mobile storefront in terms of consumer spending from a variety of perspectives. Last year, consumers spent 88 percent more on the App Store than on Google Play,” noted Randy Nelson, SensorTower’s Head of Mobile Insights.

 

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