Sensor Tower: Apple's App Store revenue was $38.5B in 2017, up 34.7% YoY, while Google Play's revenue was $20.1B, up 34.2% YoY
Context & Ripple Effects
Sensor Tower's 2017 tally lands two months after App Annie counted nearly 26B quarterly downloads across both stores, up just 8% YoY — the pairing is the story: installs are flattening while spending compounds at ~34%, meaning growth is coming from paying users, not new ones.
The dollar gap matters more than the matching growth rates: Apple's App Store did $38.5B against Google Play's $20.1B, so Android's larger install base converts to far less revenue — a gap that later coverage shows persisting in [[a:936826|publisher outcomes, where 164 App Store developers earned their first $1M in 2018 versus 88 on Google Play]].
First-order effects
- Developers choosing a lead platform have their answer quantified: identical ~34% growth, but App Store revenue running nearly double Google Play's, concentrating premium spend on iOS.
Second-order effects
- The monetization asymmetry forces cross-platform studios to treat Android as reach and iOS as revenue, which is visible downstream in subscription apps, where the App Store generated $13.5B of top-100 non-game subscription spending in 2021 versus Google Play's $4.8B (Sensor Tower's subscription tracking).
Third-order effects
- If the trajectory holds toward Sensor Tower's forecast of $96B App Store and $60B Google Play spending by 2023, the two stores harden into a duopoly gatekeeping an ever-larger share of consumer software spend — the structural position that later draws take-rate regulation.
The trend: Mobile app revenue is compounding at 30%+ annually on a flat install base, with iOS capturing a disproportionate share of developer earnings as the stores consolidate into the industry's dominant payment rails.