Global app stores sales drop to $31.6 bn in Q3, TikTok breaks record

Global consumer spending on in-app purchases, premium apps, and subscriptions on Apple App Store and Google Play declined by 4.8 per cent (year-over-year) to $31.6 billion in the third quarter (Q3), a new report showed on Friday.

App adoption also fell year-over-year, though not as sharply, declining by 1 per cent to 35.3 billion, according to Sensor Tower data.

Chinese short-form video app TikTok continued its reign as the top grossing non-game app worldwide across the App Store and Google Play combined.

TikTok saw approximately $914.4 million in consumer spending this quarter, bringing its lifetime total to roughly $6.3 billion, according to the report.

“TikTok was the No. 1 revenue-generating non-game app on the App Store, while on Google Play it came second to Google One, which maintained its No. 1 spot with a little more than $330 million,” it added.

The revenue generated on Apple’s marketplace was more than double that of Google Play’s, though it still fell 2.3 per cent YoY to $21.2 billion from $21.7 billion in the year-ago period.

Google Play saw a steeper decline as the store generated approximately $10.4 billion in consumer spending, down 9.6 per cent YoY from $11.5 billion in the third quarter last year.

TikTok was once again the most downloaded non-game app across both marketplaces, reaching approximately 196.5 million installs in Q3.

In the first half of 2022, Instagram was No. 1 by downloads on Google Play, but it traded that spot to fellow Meta app Facebook in Q3, which saw approximately 150.3 million first-time installs on the Android marketplace.

Consumer spending in mobile games declined even more steeply than non-game apps, with revenue for the category falling 12.7 per cent to $19.3 billion in the third quarter, the report mentioned.

Worldwide downloads of mobile games remained flat at 13.7 billion.