The revenues of App Store and Play Store are in decline: this was revealed by Morgan Stanley who underlines how the -5% recorded by Apple in September (-14% in the case of games) is the worst figure since 2015 to date. It is no better for Google, whose revenue on the virtual app store is decreased by 9 percentage points. These are clearly not official data, but estimates based on statistics collected by Sensor Tower and revised by the American investment bank.
There economic and financial crisis currently underway has forced consumers to reduce spending on non-essential goods and services to cope with the rising cost of living. And the performance of the App Store and Play Store are clear proof of this after years of very strong growth. Apple never communicates the economic-financial data of its virtual store, integrating them rather under the heading Services which, however, also includes product warranties and subscriptions (Apple One, Apple TV + and Apple Music among them).
Considering the Apple services sector as a whole, however, a increase in September equal to 8 percentage points. To put the data into context, it should be noted that the Cupertino company recorded an increase in revenues from services in the third quarter of 12.1%, from 17.48 to 19.60 billion dollars.
It is also true that comparing this year’s data with those of 2021 risks highlighting a market trend that is not entirely true: in fact, last year there was an anomalous and completely exceptional growth, driven by the needs of the pandemic crisis that had accelerated the acquisition processes of certain types of goods and services.
Since Morgan Stanley has relied on Sensor Tower data for its September estimates, we too are going to analyze the situation of the two stores during the third quarter. Well, it turns out that in-app, premium app and App Store and Play Store subscription expenses fell by 4.8% on an annual basis for apps and games up to settle at 31.6 billion dollars. The contraction is greater for Google, whose revenues rose from 11.5 to 10.4 billion dollars (-9.6%), while those of Apple decreased by 2.3% from 21.7 to 21.2 billion dollars.
The non-game app that has generated the most revenues in the world is TikTok, both globally and on the App Store. On the Play Store on the top step of the podium we find Google One. In short:
- downloads grew on the App Store by 3.8%, down by 2.2% on the Play Store. In total, the drop is 0.8%
- the most downloaded non-game app in the world in Q3 2022 was TikTok (also on the App Store, Facebook instead on the Play Store)
- spending on app gaming fell by 12.7%: -9.8% on the App Store, -16.9% on the Play Store
- the game that generated the most revenue was Honor of Kings (also on the App Store, Coin Master on the Play Store)
- Gaming app downloads remained stable from the same quarter last year
- the most downloaded game overall and on the App Store was Subway Surfers, Garena Free Fire on Play Store
