Sensor Tower: US iPhone users spent $79 on average on apps last year, up 36% from $58 in 2017 and up from $33 in 2015
Apple's push to get developers to build subscription-based apps is now having a notable impact on App Store revenues. According to a new report from Sensor Tower due …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the third installment of Sensor Tower's annual per-user series: US iPhone spending rose from $58 in 2017 to $79 last year, and the report credits Apple's developer push toward subscription-based apps. The trajectory has since continued — Sensor Tower later measured $138 per user in 2020, the fastest annual growth since 2016.
First-order effects
- Apple's App Store takes a larger cut of a growing pool: with more than 800 million weekly App Store visitors per Apple's own site, each incremental dollar of per-user spend compounds directly into services revenue.
- Developers who converted to subscriptions capture recurring revenue instead of one-off purchases, which is why entertainment and lifestyle categories led the earlier spending surge.
Second-order effects
- Google Play is pulled along the same curve — it matched Apple's growth rate in 2017 App Store/Play revenue comparisons, and subscription economics give Android developers the same incentive to convert.
- As install growth flattens (Sensor Tower measured iOS installs declining while global spending hit records), monetization shifts from user acquisition to extracting more revenue per existing device.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, app-store competition becomes a race on revenue-per-active-device rather than download counts, favoring platforms with affluent, locked-in users — and intensifying regulatory scrutiny of the 15-30% commission on subscriptions that now anchor this growth.
The trend: Mobile app economics are shifting from paid downloads and ad-supported installs to subscription revenue concentrated on a shrinking base of high-spending users.