| Cult of Mac

App Store spending could more than double by 2025

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App Store spending
How the App Store could rise in the next few years.
Photo: Sensor Tower

After booming during lockdown in 2020, the App Store isn’t likely to slow down over the next five years, according to a new report.

App analytics platform Sensor Tower’s projections indicate App Store spending could hit $185 billion per year in the next half-decade. That’s compared to $72 billion in 2020.

TikTok is top-grossing iOS app for December

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U.S. investigations of TikTok gather steam.
TikTok had a very strong 2020.
Photo: Kon Karampelas/Unsplash CC

TikTok, the ultra-popular short-form video app, finished 2020 on a high note as December’s top-grossing non-gaming app. According to app analytics platform Sensor Tower, TikTok pulled in $142 million that month across iOS and Android.

That’s 3.3 times the revenue TikTok produced in December 2019. The overwhelming majority of this money (86%) came from China, where TikTok is known as Douyin. The United States ranked second for TikTok spending, accounting for 7% of revenue.

Users spent massive $73.4 billion in the App Store last year

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iPhone 12 Pro parts cost shockingly little
The App Store was quite the money-maker for Apple last year.
Photo: Cult of Mac

What pandemic? According to a new report from app analytics firm Sensor Tower, global spending on mobile apps across both iOS and Android hit an astonishing $111 billion in 2020. That’s a massive 30% growth from 2019.

The overwhelming spend — $72.3 billion — was on iOS, despite the larger number of Android devices. Google Play revenue, meanwhile, came in at $38.6 billion. Both app stores showed approximately the same level of growth over the year.

Home improvement apps boom during lockdown

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Home improvement
With people stuck home, this is what they turned to.
Photo: KJ Styles/Unsplash CC

The app economy has done well during the coronavirus pandemic but some categories have done better than others. According to a new report by app analytics platform Sensor Tower, one category of app that has done exceptionally well are home improvement apps.

In the United States, first-time installs of the top home improvement apps doubled year-over-year between the months of March and September. Monthly active users also grew by 35% during that time.

TikTok pulls in more than $130.5 million in user spending in September

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TikTok 1
TikTok has had something of an unpredictable year so far.
Photo: TikTok

TikTok pulled in more than $130.5 million in worldwide user spending in September, making it the top-grossing non-gaming app in the App Store — despite the various existential threats it faces.

In a new report by app analytics firm Sensor Tower, the company notes that user spending on TikTok in September was 7.9 times greater than this time last year. That $130m sum covers both iOS and Google Play revenue.

App Store spending on mobile games hit $11.6 billion last quarter

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birthday
This was one of the top games of the quarter.
Photo: Niantic

Spending on mobile games in the App Store grew significantly over the past quarter, despite the coronavirus pandemic, a new report by Sensor Tower claims. Across the App Store and Google Play, global spending grew 27% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2020 to hit $19.3 billion.

Of the total revenue, the App Store made up $11.6 billion to Google Play’s $7.7 billion. That’s even though the App Store only making up a tiny 2.7 billion of the overall 15.1 billion app downloads in the quarter. As ever, the App Store is where the lion’s share of profits is to be made!

These were the top video steaming apps on iOS in June

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75% of Netflix users have no plans to jump ship to Apple TV+ (right away)
Netflix is continuing its momentum in the age of Disney+ and others.
Photo: Stock Catalog/Flickr CC

There might be more streaming services than ever, but Netflix seems like it’s continuing to maintain momentum in the age of Disney+, HBO+, and others.

According to a new report by Sensor Tower, Netflix was the second-most downloaded iOS app in the App Store. The number one streaming video app? YouTube, of course.

App Store revenue continues to dwarf Google Play’s in 2020

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app-store
The App Store was a cash-printing giant in the first half of 2020.
Photo: Apple

Total App Store spending surged to a massive $32.8 billion in the first half of 2020, combining money spent on premium downloads, subscriptions, and in-app purchases, a recent blog post from app analytics firm Sensor Tower suggests.

Not only is that an enormous amount of cash, but it’s also close to double the estimated gross revenue spent in the Google Play store, despite the bigger market share enjoyed by Android. User spending on Google Play reportedly hit $17.3 billion in the first half of the year.

Users flock to mental wellness apps during COVID-19 lockdown

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Mental wellness app downloads surge due to COVID-19. The coronavirus presents no end of challenges for people.
The coronavirus presents no end of challenges for people.
Photo: Fernando @cferdo/Unsplash CC

Alongside the physical health concerns during COVID-19, there’s been a massive uptick in mental health issues like anxiety. Those worries are highlighted by a big surge in mental wellness mobile app downloads, as noted in a new report from app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

The firm notes that the top 10 mental wellness apps experienced a big increase in downloads in April from the pre-lockdown January 2020. In all, apps like Calm, Headspace and Meditopia racked up a total of 10 million downloads last month.

Mobile app downloads surge during coronavirus lockdown

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Mask download
Stuck home? There's an App Store for that.
Photo: Engin Akyurt/Unsplash

Few areas are booming right now like mobile apps, which have experienced massive growth during coronavirus lockdown. According to a new report from app analytics platform Sensor Tower, data used by mobile app downloads has surged during lockdown.

In a post published Wednesday, the firm said data usage for first-time installs of the top 250 mobile apps worldwide was up 34% from the same quarter last year. Based on an average of the last three years, it is up a whopping 52% — hitting an unfathomable 391 petabytes in Q1 2020. (A petabyte equals roughly 1,000 terabytes.)