As the company behind Android, Google is frequently positioned as one of Apple’s biggest enemy when it comes to smartphones. But it’s actually doing incredibly well thanks to iOS — as a new Sensor Tower report makes clear.
Published Monday, the report notes that Google was the no. 1 mobile publisher in the App Store for July 2020, based on total number of installs. Google’s top apps include YouTube, Google Hangouts, Gmail, Google Calendar, and others.
Google impressively outdid Facebook, which came in the number three position. (Number two was Chinese developer Tencent.) Facebook’s most popular apps include Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
Google in the App Store
Provided Sensor Tower’s figures are accurate, it’s a fascinating glimpse at how interlocked the tech giants actually are. We think of Google (or, at least, its parent company Alphabet) as a rival of Apple because both have their own mobile operating systems and, with the arrival of the Pixel, smartphones. Steve Jobs famously said that Apple was waging “thermonuclear war” on Google after it launched Google.
In fact, as this ranking shows, Google benefits plenty from the existence of the App Store. A similarly complex relationship exists with Samsung, which takes frequent shots at Apple, but also profits from every iPhone sold.
In recent years, the relationship between Apple and Google has been somewhat friendlier. They decided to put aside their lawsuits several years ago. They have also teamed up on several occasions, most recently for the coronavirus contact-tracing API both companies worked on.
Source: Sensor Tower
