Data Reveals What App Store Makes More Money (Spoiler: It’s Apple’s)

We’ve known for a while that Apple’s App Store typically generates bigger sales than the Google Play Store, but new data provided by SensorTower comes to reveal that the gap between the two is increasing.

The new numbers for the first half of 2019 show that app sales in the two stores reacheD $39.7 billion, an increase of no less than 15.4 percent from the same period a year ago.

When it comes to the App Store alone, sales here totaled $25.5 billion, up 13.2 percent from the first half of 2018. This means Apple’s App Store generates some 80 percent more money than the Google Play Store, which recorded an estimated gross revenue of $14.2 billion in the same period.

WhatsApp, the most downloaded app

Tinder is currently the app that brings home the bacon, as it secured the leading position with total sales of $497 million on iOS and Android. SensorTower says Tinder managed to increase its revenue by no less than 32 percent versus the first half of 2018.

Netflix’s decision to pull subscriptions from its iOS client pushed the app to the second position with revenues of “just” $399 million, and it is followed by the Chinese-made Tencent Video with $278 million.

As far as games are concerned, Honor of Kings is still the number one with $728 million in revenues, followed by Fate/Grand Order from Sony Aniplex and Mixi’s Monster Strike with $628 million and $566 million, respectively. Candy Crush Saga and PUBG Mobile round up the top 5.

“Google Play installs grew 16.4 percent Y/Y for the half to 41.9 billion, up from 36 billion in 1H18. This was about 2.8 times greater than the volume of first-time downloads on iOS for the first two quarters of this year. Still, Apple’s platform continued to generate nearly 1.8 times more revenue than Google’s on only about a third as many installs,” SensorTower notes.

The most downloaded apps in the first half of the year are still WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Facebook. TikTok is fourth, followed by…