App Revenues, Downloads Worldwide Highest Ever in Q3 2017

From July to September of this year, the amount of revenues generated from mobile apps and the volume of app downloads was at their highest ever, according to the new report recently released by App Annie. App revenues have reached a record of almost $17 billion, while the app downloads via Google Play and the App Store have hit close to 26 billion across the globe, marking an 8 percent improvement over the volume registered in the same three month period in the previous year. 

The $17 billion revenues generated from mobile apps during Q3 2017 represents a 28 percent increase over that of Q3 2016. The App Store captured a very big chunk of this app revenue growth, logging revenues that are nearly double that of Google Play. In terms of spending for apps, the Chinese mobile market showed the highest year over year improvement, followed by South Korea. 

App Annie is projecting right now that global revenues generated from mobile app downloads will surpass a hundred billion dollars by the year 2021. As for worldwide downloads, it will hit almost 240 billion four years from now. 

Speaking of app downloads, App Annie was quick to point out that a large portion of the increase in the volume of app downloads can be attributed to emerging mobile markets, where the level of smartphone penetration is far from hitting saturation levels yet. In other words, there is still plenty of room to growth, which means that downloads will continue to go up in the near future.

On Google Play, the biggest contributor in the global download growth was India. As a matter of fact, the volume of app downloads by Indian mobile users has increased almost two fold from last year’s third quarter period to this year’s. Other Asian countries also saw significant growth too, with special mention to Indonesia and Vietnam, with both countries recording double digit growth rates in the last twelve months. Google Play downloads also improved by 10 percent compared to last year’s.

As for iOS app downloads, the App Store’s growth rate during the third quarter has increased 8 percent compared to the previous quarter. This 8 percent growth rate is the best quarter over quarter growth rate since the first quarter of last year. According to App Annie, the specific market that contributed the most to this growth is China, which posted the best quarter over quarter market share growth among all other major mobile markets around the world, besting even that of the United States and Saudi Arabia.