App Store loses in downloads — users download fewer and fewer iOS apps

This is the main conclusion that can be drawn from the latest Sensor Tower report. The analytical platform recently presented a study of the mobile market for the first half of this year.

Moreover, we are talking about both installations of all types of applications in general (a drop of 1.4% compared to the same indicator last year) and installations of games (a drop of 1.3%).

Sensor Tower analysts explain the decline by the situation in China. Apparently, they are referring to the decline in iPhone sales in China. As IDC reported in February, Apple’s smartphone sales in China fell by 20% in the last quarter of 2018 alone.

As for the rest of the research figures, they are slightly lower.

The situation in the mobile market as a whole (user costs and downloads)

• In January-June, App Store and Google Play users left $39.7 billion in mobile applications (YoY-an increase of 15.4%).
• Most of the amount — $25.5 billion — came from the App Store (YoY-an increase of 13.2%).
• The remaining $14.2 billion was spent on Google Play (YoY-19% growth).

• The total downloads of both stores for the first half of 2019 amounted to 56.7 billion.
• The smaller part — 14.8 billion — traditionally fell on the App Store (YoY-a drop of 1.4%).
• Most of the installations — 41.9 billion — were made from Android devices (YoY-an increase of 16.4%).

The situation on the mobile games market (user costs and downloads)

• In January-June, App Store and Google Play users left $29.6 billion in mobile games (YoY-an increase of 11.3%).
• The App Store generated most of the amount — $17.6 billion (YoY-growth of 7.8%*).

* Sensor Tower considers such growth rates to be very low. She explains them with the decline in sales of iOS games in China. The latter may be associated with a lengthy approval procedure for the games in the country.

• The remaining $12 billion was generated by Google Play (YoY-growth of 16.8%).
• Sensor Tower still considers Honor Kings to be the highest-grossing game in the world. According to the service, the game earned $728 million in six months, excluding revenue from Chinese Android stores.
• The two remaining lines in the top 3 are also occupied by eastern projects. Fate/Grand Order from Sony is in second place with $628 million, and Monster Strike from Mixi is in third place with $566 million.

• As for downloads, in total, all game applications were downloaded from mobile stores 20.1 billion times (YoY-an increase of 3.2%).
• iOS accounted for 4.4 billion downloads (YoY-a drop of 1.4%).
• 15.7 billion games were downloaded from Google Play (YoY-growth of 4.6).
• The most downloaded games were: Color Bump 3D from Good Job Games, Garena Free Fire from Garena and PUBG Mobile from Tencent.

Also on the topic:

• Sensor Tower shared the top of the most downloaded Russian applications in the worldSensor Tower: User spending on the App Store and Google Play will more than double by 2023