The Majority of Mobile Revenue Generated Comes From Games

Major Findings

The vast majority of all revenue generated in the Apple App Store and Google Play came from games in September 2013. Most of the combined revenue was generated on the Apple App Store (63%), compared to Google Play (37%).

The revenue shares of games on both iOS and Google Play have increased year-over-year. In September 2012, the revenue share of games in both stores was on average 13 percent lower than in September 2013.

48% of all apps in the Top Overall were games and those apps generated 92% of the revenue for Google Play. For the Apple App Stores (average of iPhone and iPad), 52% of the apps in the Top Overall were games and these apps generated 79% of the revenue.

94% of the revenue generated from Google Play in Korea came from games. The largest revenue share from games in the Apple App Store was in Taiwan at 84%.Games was also the largest category in terms of device installs in Google Play. Games gathered 37% of all device installs in the whole store.

The revenue share of games was the lowest in Germany but still impressive. 59% and 79% of the revenue in the Top Overall was gained through games in the Apple App Store and Google Play respectively. Navigation popped up as a relatively important category in Germany as well.

Games were the most downloaded apps on both iPhone and iPad. On iPhone, 33% of all downloads were games. For iPad, this portion was even higher at 48%.

In the Amazon Appstore, 63% of all downloads were generated by games.

Role-playing games (RPGs) had the largest share of the revenue in the All Games category: 14% in the Apple App Store. Game of War - Fire Age by Machine Zone, Inc was the most popular app in this category in September 2013.

The most popular game genres in Google Play in terms of revenue were: Arcade & Action, Casual and Brain & Puzzle, in that respective order.