James Delahunty
3 Nov 2013 17:02
A report into the state of the major smartphone and tablet app marketplaces - the App Store and Google Play - has found that Google Play edged the Apple store by volume but lags far behind in revenue.
The third quarter 2013 report from App Annie shows that the Google Play store has 25 percent more downloads than Apple's App Store. The big sources of increasing downloads for the Google store are Brazil and Argentina, with game downloads leading the way.
"The increase in Google Play's downloads was primarily driven by Brazil and Argentina with the former climbing one spot in the rankings to #4 behind the US, South Korea and India. Games remained the leading category in Brazil, but gains made by the Communication and Media & Audio categories also helped them achieve their Google Play download ranking," said App Annie in its report.
While Google will be delighted to see its store deliver more apps to users, it only generated half the revenue that Apple's App Store did. Japan was the biggest source of revenue for Google Play, just ahead of South Korea. The United States was in third place.
For the App Store, growth came from China which is just behind the United States in second place for volume of downloads, ahead of Japan. In term of revenue though, the Japanese spent more than China, but the United States stays at the top.
Read the full report: blog.appannie.com