Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) are leading the app market and other players also contribute to this.
CNBC’s Josh Lipton discussed how app economy has grown over the years and it impact on the revenue for a lot of small companies. He said that the total app sales globally have grown to $30 billion and analysts expect the total to be $100 billion by 2020.
“The global app economy is actually now equal to GDP of some small countries.” Lipton said.
He said that that most of the revenue comes from the stores of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). Google Play Store has 1.5 million apps and Apple’s App Store has around 1.2 million apps currently.
According to App Annie, which provides data and analysis to the app industry, games are the most popular apps followed by messaging, music streaming, news and dating apps. The top game in 2013 was actually a free game called “Puzzle and Dragons” developed by GungHo Online Entertainment which is a California based company. The revenue is generated from the in-app purchases. The Candy Crush Saga by King Digital Entertainment PLC (NYSE:KING) is second on the list and it has a similar revenue model too.
The list of top non game downloads by revenue had line at the first position and this app helps users to make calls and messages free. Line has over 500 million users in almost 230 countries. The other apps in the list include Pandora Radio, Zoose and Badoo. With all these apps available, analysts warn of app saturation and say that the users are downloading fewer apps which means that the users don’t need new apps to cover their needs.
Dan Ackerman, senior editor at Cnet.com also provided his views on how this app economy is turning and how the key players act as pivots for the app market. He said that the quality of apps on the Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) side of app market is not as good as compared to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) because of the reason that anyone can develop apps for Android.
“It’s essentially a mom and pop business to a large degree. You can be creating app out of your garage. “ Dominic Chu said about the mobile app development industry.
Disclosure: None
