Report: Google Play gets double the download numbers as iOS but brings in half the revenue

The latest quarterly App Annie report is out with its detailed breakdown of the worldwide app market. Google Play maintained its dominant position over iOS in terms of download numbers, racking up double as many installs as iOS, but iOS continues to dominate financially, with 90% more revenue than Google Play.

The other big news in this quarter’s report is that while China was the biggest growth market year-on-year for iOS revenue, that honor was held by the U.S. for Google Play. Because of Google’s delicate situation in China, Google makes very little money there, but strong U.S. growth shows positive signs for Android app revenue in future. Maybe not enough to disrupt the established hegemony anytime soon, but promising progress nonetheless.

On the download numbers front, India was the biggest growth market for Android year-on-year, followed by Vietnam and Pakistan, while iOS once again saw its greatest annual growth in installs from China. The platform discrepancies between revenue and downloads demonstrate that while Android tends to make money from a market after it enjoys massive growth based on the installation of free apps, iOS tends to enjoy both install and revenue growth at the same time.

The other big news is that China has assumed the number two spot in terms of iOS revenue generation, replacing Japan for the first time based on strong gaming expenditure. China is already well on its way towards taking the number one spot from the U.S. when it comes to iOS revenue made specifically from games and App Annie pegs China as holding huge potential for eSports growth in 2016.

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Not including games, the highest earning app categories on Android were communication and social apps, with the bulk of downloads coming from the “tools” category. Communication and photography apps were next in line for the most popular app categories on Android, although photography apps didn’t even make the top ten contributors to Google Play revenue.

Do the installs vs revenue figures surprise you? How much do you spend on Android apps?