App stores - Statistics & Facts
Platforms comparison
In terms of content volume, Google Play is the largest app store in the world. The number of apps available on Google Play has been increasing since the release of the platform in 2008. After surpassing the one million app mark in 2013, the number of apps temporarily declined in mid-2018 before growing again and reaching a peak of 4.67 million available apps at the end of 2021. Between the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, the number of apps available in the Google Play Store decreased, as the platform delisted approximately 418 thousand apps at the end of the year. Even though the majority of Google Play Store apps are free, Google’s digital content and app platform generate double-digit revenues in billion U.S. dollars each year from games sales and in-app payments.Apple’s App Store is the second-largest app store worldwide. The pioneering platform offered approximately 1.6 million apps to iOS users at the end of 2022. Although Google has led the ranking of available apps and app downloads for several years, Apple continues to record higher mobile user spending and gross app revenue figures.
Third-party app stores
While Google Play and the App Store are the most prominent distribution channels for mobile apps, offering almost global coverage to a broad potential audience, alternative app stores have been holding a small but significant foothold in the market. Notably, the Amazon Appstore has been steadily increasing the number of available applications for Android users, reaching a peak of 488 thousand apps at the beginning of 2022, before falling back to 483 thousand apps in the third quarter of 2022. The Amazon AppStore, which launched in 2011, distributes exclusively Android apps that are mainly free to download.The Windows Store, which launched in October 2012, presented a majority of free apps for smartphone and tablet across all the most popular categories as of the second quarter of 2022, with approximately 38 thousand free gaming apps versus six thousand paid gaming apps as of the examined period. During the second quarter of 2022, a large number of the mobile apps available on the Microsoft Store reached the U.S. market, while a limited number of apps available on the platform were not available in the country.
Additionally, regional differences and global dynamics have been playing a role in the creation of additional app stores and global distributors. The unique digital environment of China provides one of the most extensive ecosystems for app distribution. As China hosts a mainly mobile-first economy, users in the county engage with an average of 7.5 mobile apps per day, downloading approximately 52 apps on a monthly basis.
The Chinese app market has been growing particularly fast: as the Google Play Store is not available in the country, various Android stores have already been launched, resulting in a fragmented app store landscape. Among the many players, the Huawei AppStore held the largest Android app market share in China as of May 2022 with a 44.31 percent share, followed with the Oppo Software Store, and the VIVO app store. As of the end of 2022, the AppGallery counted over 580 million monthly active users worldwide. Quick App, Huawei’s development and distribution platform for lighter app experiences, counted 170 million active users on a monthly basis. In 2019, Huawei was caught in the middle of the trade war between the United States and China, resulting in the limitation of some Google services on Huawei devices. As of 2023, Huawei smartphones users can currently only rely on AppGallery as their preinstalled app distributor, as Google Mobile Services are still unavailable for the brand.