Only 25 developers get 50% of profits in the App Store and Play

If it was necessary to prove that the “gold rush” in the field of application development led to the concentration of most of the “gold” in the hands of just a few developers, here it is: according to the Canalys analytical center, last month only 25 developers gathered half application revenue in two dominant US stores - the Apple App Store and Google Play.

These findings were made on the basis of daily research carried out using the Canalys App Interrogator tool, and relate to the income generated by these stores in America during the first 20 days of November. Thus, according to the analytical center, during this period, 25 developers have earned a total of $ 60 million from paid downloads and in-app purchases. All of these developers, as one, are game developers. The exception was the Pandora music streaming service with its Pandora Radio app. Among the game developers on the list were Zynga, Electronic Arts, Disney, Kabam, Rovio, Glu, Gameloft and TeamLava from Storm8.

Analysts from Canalys note that in this period of the top 300 paid apps in the Apple App Store 145 were games, as for Google Play, here out of 300 top paid apps 116 were games. If we talk about free applications, then for Apple - 94 out of 300 were games, and for Google Play - 110.
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From this it follows that developers who do not create games are forced to participate in a big obstacle race in order for their product to become popular and generate income. "Detectability is a particular problem for the Apple App Store and Google Play, given the huge amount of products they sell," said Tim Shepard, a senior analyst at Canalys. “Taking into account the prevailing share of content from game developers in these stores, it is difficult for other equally quality applications to get the attention they deserve. Other developers need to think about how to promote their applications. Depending on the type of application, they need to understand how best to use social networks and recommendations in them, tactics of promoting their product and discounts, binding to the brand and targeted advertising within applications. ”

If there is any major way to attack a gold mine with gaming applications, then all successful game developers "almost always have a whole set of income-generating applications," says Canalys, so in other words, do not put All the eggs of "Evil Birds" in one basket. The analytic center cites the example of Zynga, which has the Apple App Store in the list of 300 most profitable applications for the iPhone 15 games, and on Google Play - 9. Even the creator of Angry Birds, the company Rovio, offered various versions of his game.

As for game developers not included in the November list, there is still more bad news ahead: the analytical center predicts that most of the 25 top developers named will strengthen their dominant positions during the holidays, “by applying discounts and special applications, as well as using the opportunities of mutual promotion their applications.

“It is expected that during the Christmas holidays in the United States, the dominant position of the main game developers will only increase,” added Canalys vice president and principal analyst Chris Jones.