App analytics firm Sensor Tower (via Ars Technica) found something interesting while looking at data for the second quarter of 2022. For the first time since the App Store opened for business in 2008, the majority of revenue in the States came from apps, not games. According to Sensor Tower, spending on non-gaming apps is growing twice as fast as gaming apps. Since June 2014, spending on non-game apps has grown at an overall rate of 40%. The transition to non-game apps began last May. Last month, 50.3% of US App Store spending was on non-gaming apps like Netflix and TikTok. This is partly due to the use of subscriptions for non-gaming apps. Gaming apps typically offer users simple subscription packages that non-gaming apps have started to adopt. Apple has reportedly met with iOS app developers in an attempt to get more of them to support using a recurring subscription model. In the second quarter of this year, 400 non-game App Store apps brought in at least $1 million from users. That compares to just 50 such apps that reached that milestone in the second quarter of 2016. Even better, 61 apps in the App Store earned $10 million in the second quarter of this year.
Spending on non-gaming apps tops gaming apps in the Apple App Store
Note that the strong growth in subscription apps found by Sensor Tower only applies to the App Store. In the Google Play Store, game apps for Android devices still make up the majority of incoming revenue. On that platform, gaming apps earned $2.3 billion in revenue in the second quarter of this year, compared to $1 billion generated by non-gaming apps. In comparison, 50.3% of App Store spending was on non-game apps, while those apps made up just 30.3% of Google Play Store purchases in the same quarter. Earlier this month, a report covering the first half of 2022 showed that spending on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store totaled $65 billion, up just 1% over the first half of the year. Android device owners spent $21.3 billion on the Play Store in the first half of 2022, down 7.4% from the $23 billion they spent in the first half of 2021. App gross revenue Store reached $41.4 for the first six months of 2022, up 22.1% year over year. As people tire of dealing with the pandemic, many are no longer interested in staying at home and playing games or even streaming movies, audio and TV shows purchased from the App Store or Google Play Store.
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