We know Apple’s App Store is performing well — the company commented on its record App Store performance during its quarterly earnings call just yesterday — but today mobile analytics firm App Annie has released its 2014 lookback which shows how iOS and Android’s respective app marketplaces compare. You probably won’t be surprised to see which store is bringing in the big bucks.
In App Annie’s 2014 Retrospective, it reports that despite Google Play amassing 60% more downloads during 2014 than iOS, the App Store raked in 70% more money for the year. The chart above represents growing revenues for both stores with iOS remaining much more lucrative than Google Play despite the chart below showing much stronger growth in terms of download numbers for the Android store.
It’s interesting to look at App Annie’s data in light of notable iOS app developers sharing some data on their apps’ performance for 2014. It was clear from the developers of the successful Monument Valley game, for example, that iOS remains the more profitable platform.
App Annie’s data, generated by analytics from more than 700,000 apps, also suggests some interesting trends in apps across geographic locations. ‘Super casual’ games like the infamous Flappy Bird gained in popularity in 2014 with messaging apps like WhatsApp, LINE and WeChat seeing huge growth and diversifying their offerings in many cases. Travel and transportation apps also grew 30% in 2014 with the likes of Uber, Lyft and Airbnb leading the charge.
Globally, Japan, South Korea and the US were the app store superpowers — collectively generating more revenue than the rest of the world combined. BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) unsurprisingly continued to see impressive growth with China becoming the #3 country in terms of iOS revenue behind only the US and Japan.
Looking at the gender composition of downloads in the US, App Annie found that the gender ratio for games skews slightly more male in composition while social networking and photo/video apps skew towards female audiences with App Annie pointing to Pinterest as an example of an app attracting a majority female audience.
Check out the full report for more insights and trends at the source link.
