“Just ahead of the iOS App Store’s 10th anniversary this month, application market research firm App Annie has released a revealing look at the all-time top apps and games, plus the developers behind them,” Jeremy Horwitz reports for VentureBeat. “On the app side, Facebook utterly dominated the all-time worldwide downloads chart, holding four of the top five positions with its eponymous app, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. App Annie tells VentureBeat that the Facebook app has seen over 700 million downloads to date. Google’s YouTube ranked third, and Google Maps ranked sixth, while Snapchat, Skype, WeChat, and QQ rounded out the chart.”
“But when all-time worldwide consumer spending was the metric, Netflix was on top with nearly $1 billion in iOS revenue as of May 2018, said App Annie,” Horwitz reports. “When it comes to games, there was overlap at the top between the all-time most downloads and all-time worldwide spending lists. With over 280 million downloads, Candy Crush Saga is the most-downloaded iOS game of all time, as well as No. 2 on the all-time consumer spending list for games. The latter chart was topped by Clash of Clans, which App Annie says has earned over $4 billion to date.”
“As App Annie pointed out in an earlier survey, consumers in the Asia-Pacific region have become the App Store’s top spenders, and companies in the region have grown dramatically in recent years,” Horwitz reports. “Last year, Asia-Pacific consumers represented 59 percent of spending and 49 percent of all downloads, with each number rising annually across seven years.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Not a bad haul for Clash of Clans!
In-game purchases have destroyed serious gaming on the iPad. Nearly all games – even paid ones, lock you out of rooms or weapons or gameplay unless you spend money on gems, crystals, fruits etc. It is almost impossible to spend good money, one-off, on a great game like on a Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft console or portable. It’s a real missed opportunity.
Do most game players share your point of view about this or is this just your personal opinion? I’m just curious. I agree with you. I don’t really like that subscription stuff. I want to buy a complete game and be done with paying extra.
Most of the big spenders on freemium games come out of Asia and Russia. Wonder why? Black market credit fraud. Dirty secret of the industry.
100% agree with you. This was huge in the Android ecosystem, and now it’s just as bad (if not worse) on iOS.
That’s the beauty of Clash of Clans. Top rated game, that excels at everything, and you have full access. You don’t need to spend any money, unless you want to beat the time crunch.
The whole idea is that you play the game first, take a taste test and only if you like it, you go further by buying stuff.
The thing that got me was when I purchased a game (Original PvsZ) and they converted it to free with advertising and even though I had paid for it I still get the Advertising.
“consumers in the Asia-Pacific region have become the App Store’s top spenders”
And yet we get the crappiest Apple Services. Maps is useless in Asia. TV, music etc. all lag behind the USA … sigh.