INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The current app store ecosystem doesn&t favor the indie developer
According to new data from Sensor Tower, the top 1% of publishers globally accounted for a whopping 80% of the total 29.6 billion app
downloads in the third quarter of 2019
That means just 20%, or 6 billion, downloads are left for the rest of the publishers.
This bottom 99%, which equates to roughly 784,080
publishers, averaged approximately 7,650 downloads each during the quarter
To put that in context, that less than one-thousandth of a percent of the downloads Facebook generated in the quarter (682 million).
The
data should not be all that surprising, given that larger, social platforms like Facebook and YouTube already serve audiences of over a
But it is concerning how uneven the market for new apps remains, especially considering that the number of available apps continues to
expand, which makes the competition even more difficult.
The report notes there were more than 3.4 million apps available across the App
Store and Google Play in 2018, up 65% from the 2.2 million apps available in 2014
But the number of apps that were able to achieve at least 1,000 installs has been declining over that same period — from 30% to
26%.
Focusing only on games, the top 1% of publishers — or 1,080 out of a total 108,000 publishers — saw 9.1 billion downloads out of
the total 11.1 billion, or 82%
This averages out to more than 8.4 million installs each
The remaining 18% of downloads, or 2 billion, were shared among the remaining 106,920 publishers
That averages out to around 18,000 downloads each.
When apps were analyzed by revenue, the gap was wider
Just 1,526 publishers generated $20.5 billion out of the total $22 billion in revenue in the quarter
Meanwhile, the remaining $1.5 billion was split among 151,056 publishers, averaging out around $9,990 each.
In terms of games revenue
alone, the 445 publishers that make up the top 1% generated $15.5 billion in revenue, or 95% of all revenue, with the remaining $800 million
split between the 44,029 publishers in the bottom 99%
This averages out to around $18,100 each.
None of these are new trends, Sensor Tower also notes
There hasn&t been much fluctuation in the top 1% share of installs or revenue for years
That means the majority of publishers will compete for a minority of new users and installs.
Image credits: Sensor Tower
