Whoever was predicting that apps were a dying commodity and would disappear in a few years is probably scratching its head right now while looking at the Q4 2017 report from App Annie. According to the figures from the retro report, people downloaded more apps than ever before in the last three months of the previous year, with 27 million across both iOS and Google Play worldwide. The latter is also enjoying their biggest lead over the former, with 145% just in that last quarter.
The 27 million app downloads in that last quarter was a 7% growth year over year. Even more good news for developers is that consumer spend during Q4 2017 was at a record $17 billion worldwide which was a 20% growth year over year as well. But the biggest winner probably is Google, as its app market widened its lead over Apple’s, and the numbers include only new downloads and not even the reinstalls or app updates.
Fueling this growth of 10% year on year growth in total downloads for Google Play Store is of course, the emerging markets where a lot of users are actually going online for the first time. India, Indonesia, and Brazil were the top three countries for year over year market share growth. India in particular surpassed the US in terms of downloads in 2017 only on the strength of its Q4 downloads.
Not surprisingly, the categories of Games, Finance, and Personalization were the top in category share growth for Q4 in 2017 for Google Play Store. Finance is also expected to go strong in Q1 of this year, as it is tax season in the US and more and more banks are going into mobile as their primary channel. Let’s see if the rest of the app world will also have a good first quarter.
SOURCE: App Annie
