9 major trends in the mobile application market in 2013

The well-known analytics service App Annie released the traditional report on the mobile application market in 2013 .
The past year was a major milestone for the entire mobile application industry, setting the stage for new exciting opportunities in 2014.

I want to give the main points of the report, which I hope will help you make the right decisions in the new year:

')

Trend number 1

Google Play bypassed iOS by the number of downloads in the world.

Despite this, the income of Android developers is almost two times less than that of their colleagues who write for iOS.

Trend # 2

Japan has become the leading market for mobile developer revenues, shifting the United States from first place.

Revenue growth of more than 3 times per year, primarily due to Google Play, brought Japan into well-deserved leaders.

Trend number 3

The rapidly developing countries have shown a significant increase in the number of downloads and have attracted the attention of experts.

In the report, these countries are united by the abbreviation BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China). This year, these countries are expected to show significant revenue growth, following the example of market leaders. Also, analysts suggest paying special attention to these countries: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Mexico, Taiwan, and Thailand.

Trend number 4

Revenues from mobile games began to bring more revenue than games for portable consoles.

Moreover, if for the App Store it happened in the first quarter of 2013, then Google Play reached this figure already in the second quarter of 2013. And the total revenues from these two stores more than three times exceeded the revenues from games on portable consoles.

Trend # 5

The freemium monetization model is the undisputed leader.

Pretty obvious victory.

Trend number 6

Messengers are evolving into a media platform.

Messaging applications actively developed additional services in 2013, which allowed them to generate significant revenue. The freemium model by which additional features were distributed, for example, sets of stickers for expressing emotions, fully justified itself. Further development of these platforms is expected with the integration of media: books, music, etc.

Trend # 7

The rapid growth of income from sales of music.

In total, for the two main stores, revenues from music applications in 2013 increased by 75% compared with 2012.

Trend number 8

The growing popularity of photo / video applications integrated with social networks.

Trend # 9

Mobile banking, payments and other financial instruments are on the rise.

Such applications were mainly used to access their banking information or virtual currencies like Bitcoin, then in 2014 a significant expansion of the range of financial instruments in the mobile applications market is expected.

Fully available to the report can be found on the website appannie.com - link

As a bonus to the main trends, I want to bring more information on the most downloaded and profitable applications and publishers of the last year in the world and Russia.

Worldwide ranking: