The Apple App Store is the second biggest app store in the world, offering more than two million apps, more than 20% of which are games.
In this blog post, I will take a closer look at:
- Just how many apps are in the Apple App Store in 2022
- How does the App Store compare to Google Play in terms of revenue and downloads, and
- Which are the most popular apps and categories on Apple’s App Store.
But before we get into that, here is some key information you need to know.
Apple App Store Key Stats
- Apple has around 2.11 million available apps.
- Apple and Google together control 95% of the app store market (excluding China).
- About 1,600 new apps are released on the platform every day.
- Even though Google leads the pack in terms of available apps and downloads, Apple records higher mobile user spending and gross app revenue.
- The App Store has roughly 32.2 billion downloads a year.
- The Apple App Store gets 500 million visitors a week.
- As of Q1 2022, there are about 288,000 mobile gaming apps on the Apple App Store
- Only 6.1% of all apps on the Apple App Store are paid apps.
- Apple’s App Store generated $21.8 billion from consumer spending in Q1 2022.
- Apple has paid out more than $260 billion to iOS app developers.
How Many Apps are on the Apple App Store
As of Q1 2022, the App Store has around 2.11 million apps, although the number continuously fluctuates as new apps are added, and low-quality ones are removed daily.
Google Play, on the other hand, has about 3.3 million.
The number of mobile apps available to iOS users increased by 5.2% in Q1 2022.
The number of apps available on the Apple App Store plummeted by almost 20% between the first and second quarters of 2021.
How many apps are added every day to the Apple App Store
The number of apps added to Apple’s marketplace fluctuates, although it typically moves between 26 and 41 thousand a month. Weekly, around 8,000 apps are released on the platform, or about 1,169 new apps a day.
In June 2022, around 36 thousand mobile apps were released through the App Store, info from Statista indicates.
How many apps are removed from the App Store every day?
Data from Apple shows that
- More than 215 thousand submissions are rejected for violation of privacy guidelines.
- More than one million submissions have been rejected for containing unsafe, illegal, and harmful content.
More than 2.3 million apps were removed because they were not compatible with the latest OS release.
How Many Apps Are Downloaded on the App Store
In 2021, the App Store had 32.2 billion downloads, way behind Google Play which recorded a whopping 111.3 billion downloads, Business of Apps reports.
Of these, 8.6 billion downloads were games, while 23.7 billion were non-gaming apps.
The most recent data show that both platforms had a combined 36.8 billion downloads in the first quarter of 2022, going up by 2% from the previous quarter and recording a slight increase from Q1 2021 when combined downloads stood at 36.6 billion.
How many first-time downloads are reported on the App Store?
In 2021, the number of new downloads reached 230 billion.
In Q1 2022 alone first-time downloads grew by 1.1% with both Apple and Google’s marketplaces seeing similar growth—new downloads on the App Store rose by 1.2% to reach 8.5 billion. On Google Play, new downloads stood at 28.3 billion, an annual increase of 1.1%.
How many gaming apps are downloaded on the App Store?
Downloads of mobile games also increased with Google Play recording a 2.5% growth to 12.1 billion first-time downloads. On the Apple App Store, first-time downloads of mobile games remained the same as Q1 2021—2.3 billion.
The USA generates the most downloads for the Apple App Store.
Counting over 84,000 average downloads per day, the USA accounts for the majority of apps downloaded via the App Store. Japan (14,870 daily and 340m+ a year) and the UK (13,480 daily and over 251 million a year) are some of Apple’s biggest markets as well.
Over at Google Play, India takes up the largest share with over 5 billion annual downloads.
App installs from the Apple App Store will reach 43 billion by 2025.
App installs across both Google and Apple’s marketplaces will grow at a 10% CAGR and reach 230 billion by 2025.
In the US, the App Store is forecast to witness a 5.2% growth to 10.6 billion downloads over the next four years.
How Big is the App Store
The Apple App Store gets 500 million visitors a week. That’s half a billion people spending an average of 33 minutes a month over 13 visits.
What’s more,
- The Apple App Store is available across 175 storefronts and in more than 40 languages.
- It is available across five different platforms and on 1.5 billion Apple devices.
Apple’s app economy supports over 2.2 million jobs in the US.
On top of this, Apple supports smaller iOS developers. Revenue for developers on the App Store who earn up to $1 million a year has risen by 118% over the past two years, almost double compared to the revenue growth of larger developers on the platform.
Most Popular Categories on the Apple App Store
Gaming apps are the most popular category on the App Store, with 13.66% of all active apps on Apple’s marketplace being games.
Other popular categories on the App Store include
- Business app (10.15%)
- Education (9.68%)
- Utilities (9.05%)
- Lifestyle (8.18%)
- Food & Drink (6.5%)
- Shopping (5.26%)
- Health & Fitness (4.71%)
- Productivity (4.55%)
- Entertrainment (4.22%)
- Finance (3.63%)
- Travel (3.3%)
- Medical (2.43%)
- Social networking (2.35%)
- Sports (2.23%)
- Music (1.9%)
- News (1.69%)
- Photography (1.61%)
- Reference (1.45%)
- Navigation (1.03%)
- Books (1.03%)
- Stickers (0.87%)
- Weather (0.19%)
- Newsstand (0.1%)
- Developer tools (0.07%)
- No category (0.05%)
As of Q1 2022, there are about 288,000 mobile gaming apps on the Apple App Store.
This is an increase of 4.78% compared to the previous quarter.
Gaming apps are also the biggest source of revenue for the App Store, generating around $51.6 billion in consumer spending across the globe, although entertainment apps are a close second with consumers dishing out $7.17 billion on this category in 2021.
Consumer spending on non-game apps is set to overtake spending on gaming apps on the App Store.
Between 2016 and 2020, spending on non-game apps increased by 4.7 times as opposed to spending on games which doubled in the same period.
Thanks in part to the subscription model, spending on non-gaming apps among iOS users is projected to reach $86 billion compared to the $73 billion spent on mobile games, Sensor Tower’s 2024 predictions show.
TikTok was the most downloaded app on the App Store in Q1 2022.
With more than 186 million installs across the world, TikTok was the most popular app on Apple’s platform, followed by YouTube and WhatsApp.
Meta, on the other hand, dominates Google Play with Instagram and Facebook being the two most downloaded apps in the first quarter of the year.
TikTok was also the highest-grossing non-game app on the App Store, generating $821 million in Q1 2022 from iOS users. On Google Play it grossed almost $250 million and was ranked second only to Google One.
The top gaming apps on the App Store came from Chinese publishers.
Honor of Kings by Tencent ($735.4 million overall), PUBG Mobile ($643 million), and Genshin Impact ($551 million) were the highest-grossing apps overall and on Apple’s marketplace.
Garena Free Fire was the most downloaded game across both marketplaces (71.2 million installs on both platforms). Next up was Subway Surfers (66.4 million installs) followed by Merge Master-Dinosaur Fusion (49.4 million).
Only 2,000 apps on the App Store are ARKit-enabled applications.
30% of those are games, Forbes reveals, while entertainment apps take up 13.2%, with education, lifestyle, and photo & video apps following.
Paid vs Free Apps on the Apple App Store
As of June 2022, only 6.1% of all apps on the Apple App Store are paid apps. The remaining 93.9% are free.
On Google Play, 97% are free apps, while only 3% are paid.
How much do apps cost on the App Store?
The average app on the App Store costs 0.88 US dollars.
The average price of a gaming app on the Apple App Store stood at 0.49 cents, Statista reveals.
As of July 2022, about 48,000 iOS applications cost less than a US dollar, whereas, around 3,600 apps were priced between $9 and $10.
Apple App Store: Revenue Statistics
According to the latest data by Sensor Tower, consumer spending on in-app purchases, premium apps and subscriptions reached $32.5 billion in the first quarter of 2022, a slight increase of 0.6% from Q1 2021.
Overall, users spent $170 billion on apps in 2021, up by 18% from the previous year, App Annie estimates. This means that over $320,000 were spent on apps per minute.
Apple’s App Store generated $21.8 billion from consumer spending in Q1 2022.
This represents an increase from the $20.6 billion recorded in the first quarter of 2021 and is almost double of Google Play’s revenue. In Q1 2022, Google Play generated $10.7 billion in consumer spending, a decline of 8.5% from Q1 2021.
Overall, the Apple App Store generated $85.1 billion from consumer spending in 2021, Statista reports.
Mobile games on the App Store earned around $12.9 billion.
In Q1 2022, revenue from mobile gaming stood at $21 billion. This marks a decline of 7.1% across both marketplaces compared to Q1 2021.
Mobile games on the App Store generated around $12.9 billion and Google saw revenue of $8.1 billion, down by 2.3% and 13.8%, respectively.
The App Store is expected to grow to $185 billion by 2025.
Sensor Tower predicts that the Apple App Store will witness a CAGR of 21%, growing to $185 billion in revenue. In the US, consumer spending on the App Store is set to rise to $74 billion at a CAGR of 17.7%.
Google Play, on the other hand, will see a 17% CAGR going up to $485 billion over the next four years.
Apple App Store Publisher & Developer Stats
As of January 2022, Apple has paid out more than $260 billion to iOS app developers.
This is the highest payout on record and a considerable increase from the $200 billion paid out last year, Statista reports.
Who are the biggest publishers on the App Store?
Small app publishers (earning up to $100,000) took up the largest share on the App Store (92%).
In contrast, app publishers who earned $1.5 million or more represented just 1.7% of all gaming app publishers but accounted for the biggest share of revenue—over 94% of all revenue generated on the Apple App Store as opposed to small publishers who accounted for only 1.3% of mobile iOS app spending.
Here is a breakdown of the biggest app publishers on the App Store by device, according to Statista:
Mobile gaming apps
- On the iPad:
- Roblox Corporation: $45.11 million in revenue;
- King: $27.88 million
- On the iPhone
- Tencent Mobile Games: $125.39 million;
- NetEase Mobile Games: $57.71 million.
Non-mobile gaming apps
- On the iPad
- Disney: $10.17 million
- Google LLC: $9.47 million
- On the iPhone
- Google LLC: $52 million
- TikTok: $40.9 million
Over 99.99% of iOS apps are made by third-party developers.
When the App Store was first launched, there were 500 third-party apps available. Today there are more than 1.8 million third-party apps compared to just 60 native apps.