Having made peace with the fact that apps are part of our daily lives, more now than could have ever been imagined, it’s great to know how much the users are putting into this market every day, month or year. There are different models that developers employ to make money out of their apps. These range from upfront payments, in – app purchases, advertising, to sponsorships. Much more revenue models are likely to be seen as the industry keep gaining traction and demand for more apps by users keep growing. One can only wonder how these revenues are distributed with Apple Insider predicting that over $25 billion revenue is expected from the industry this year alone.
Steps of App Revenue Distribution
Revenue Distribution by Store
Apple and Google offer the top app stores for iOS and Android users respectively. Between January and now iOS revenue has grown from 100 to 113% whilst Google Play has risen from 7% to 28%, an indicator that Android apps revenue are likely to continue growing at a faster pace than iOS despite the integration that iOS has always provided its users across all Apple devices. It will still prove difficult to move iOS users from the comfort of what they are used to and have always trusted.
Revenue Distribution by Country
As Silicon Valley is where the technology and apps boom was born, it’s easy to think that the most apps revenue comes from the United States. Statistics prove otherwise. The one top-performing app, besides social media ones that is from the USA is Zynga. This could be because the app is sold on both Google Play and iOS. For Google Play the most revenue comes from Japan, coming in second is USA followed by South Korea. iOS top revenues come USA, followed by Japan and then the UK.
Other countries following to the top three on both iOS and Google Play are Australia, Canada and Germany though the figures are much lower than the top three. Based on 2012 revenue figures this therefore means that Google Play made 73% of its total revenue from the top three countries whilst 54% of iOS revenue was also from the top three countries.
Revenue Distribution by Category
The gaming apps take the lead. Over 80% of the total apps revenue in December 2012 alone came from gaming apps. The other revenue just under 20% came from all other apps, social networking, communications, productivity, etc.
Revenue Distribution by Revenue Model
Apps revenue differ a lot based on how users can access them. Even though apps that can be accessed by paying upfront such as subscriptions have very low user base, they are the ones where most of the revenue comes from. This is followed by revenue from advertising that seems to be increasing more and more. Just over 38% of developers are currently using advertising as the best form of revenue making which allows them to offer their apps free of charge to users. The next revenue models where revenue comes from are in – app purchases and fremiums.