App Annie: app downloads across Apple's App Store and Google Play reached nearly 26B in Q3 '17, up 8% YoY
Context & Ripple Effects
App Annie's Q3 2017 tally of nearly 26 billion downloads is an early checkpoint in the quarterly series it would go on publishing: the following year's Q1 2018 report showed downloads accelerating past 27.5B with spending up 22% YoY, and Q2 2018 hit 28.4B downloads with consumer spending at $18.5B. The pattern that emerges across the coverage is that money grows faster than installs.
The volume-versus-revenue split was already visible in this quarter's data: by Q4 2017, Google Play downloads surpassed Apple's App Store by 145%, yet the App Store led consumer spend by 95%, and Sensor Tower's full-year figures put both stores' revenue growth above 34% against single-digit download growth.
First-order effects
- Developers and publishers on both stores enter Q4 2017 with a larger addressable install base, but the growth is concentrated on Google Play while Apple's store remains the monetization engine.
Second-order effects
- With revenue rising ~34% YoY (Sensor Tower's 2017 tallies) against 8% download growth, per-user value becomes the metric that matters, pushing publishers toward subscriptions and in-app purchases rather than pure install-scale plays.
Third-order effects
- If the divergence holds, the app economy stratifies into a two-tier structure — Android for reach, iOS for revenue — which is exactly what later App Annie data confirmed, with 65 cents of every dollar spent going to iOS by 2020.
The trend: The app economy is shifting from download-volume growth to per-user monetization, with Google Play supplying installs and Apple's App Store capturing the majority of spending.