Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) five-year App Store anniversary gift to consumers didn't necessarily pay off in terms of downloads, according to a recent report from Distimo. The analytics firm introduced a new monthly report which looks at the top apps across all major platforms and breaks down adoption by geography and top titles. Findings from the report include:
- None of the paid apps that were "free" for the Apple App Store's 5th anniversary made it into July's top five free apps. BADLAND was the highest at No. 6, and Infinity Blade II made it to No. 9.
- Of the top free apps for July 2013, Gameloft's Despicable Me: Minion Rush came out a winner. The app was popular globally on the Apple App Store, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Play and the Amazon Appstore.
- Globally, the top paid downloaded app of July 2013 for iOS was WhatsApp Messenger. For Google Play it was SwiftKey keyboard and for the Amazon Appstore it was Minecraft - Pocket Edition.
- The highest-revenue generating app globally in July was Candy Crush Saga in both the Apple App Store and Google Play.
- The top publisher in July was Gameloft, a developer that showed consistent success globally in July in all three app stores (Apple App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore) due to the success of its app, Despicable Me: Minion Rush.
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Although the Apple App store leads the market in terms of revenue, Google Play's share has gained eight points since February 2013. |
"The Apple App store was still the larger market compared to Google Play in July 2013 in terms of total revenue. However, Google Play's cut has increased significantly over the past few months," the report says. "While only 25 percent of the combined revenue came from Google Play in February 2013, this share went up by eight percentage points to 33 percent in July 2013. In revenue terms the Apple App store was still twice as large as Google Play."
If nothing else, the data here gives a good read on the competition and the sense of possibilities open to developers who manage to make a breakthrough hit. GameLoft's Despicable Me shows that it is indeed possible to dominate across multiple platforms, but the real story may be the success of Candy Crush Saga, which proves that casual gaming is a big deal not just from an adoption but a monetization standpoint. Finally, while Apple's gambit of offering major apps for free was widely seen as a boon to those selected, it's not as easy for the platform providers to artificially manipulate the market as it might seem. Consumers are making their own choices, and once they see something they like from GameLoft or other top publishers, the viral effect is near-unstoppable.
For more:
- check out the complete Distimo Top Global Apps July 2013 report here
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