[INFOGRAPHIC]: Countries with Most App Downloads

Because we’re past half of the year, we wanted to take a step back to identify the most dominant countries and behaviors in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store from January to June 2019.

Therefore, we’ve gathered some interesting data on the number of downloads per country and the average daily downloads by store, for the first semester of 2019.

Read on to learn more about our 6 main findings:

Data: All data was computed with app download estimates from AppTweak’s Market Intelligence for the Top 500 apps in both the Apple and Google Play Stores from January to June 2019.

⚠️Important: To standardize all data, we excluded China from the analysis because the Google Play Store is not available there due to the Internet blocking.

1. India is the most popular country in terms of app installs

Across all countries, we filtered 10 countries with the highest estimation of number of downloads: India, the United States, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Mexico, Vietnam, Turkey, Japan, and the UK.

We found that India leads the pack when it comes to app downloads, generating more than 5 Bn downloads across both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the first half of 2019.

Total number of downloads for the Top 10 countries (Estimates from Top 500 apps from the category “all”, January to June 2019, Apple App Store and Google Play Store)

Source: AppTweak’s data

World Map with the Top 10 countries with the highest number of downloads (Estimates from Top 500 apps from the category “all”, January to June 2019, Apple App Store and Google Play Store)

2. Two Latin American countries have made it to the Top 10 countries with the highest number of downloads

In terms of app downloads, we’ve estimated that today both Brazil and Mexico are leading the growth in Latin America. Moreover, Brazil is already the third country with the most app downloads!

Latin America is gaining more relevance in the Mobile Industry, as the use of mobile phones is increasing.

In fact, according to the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA, 2018), “Latin America and the Caribbean will account for 10% of all new mobile subscribers globally out to 2025… increases in subscriber numbers will be delivered by major markets including Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia… By 2025, around three-quarters of the region’s population will subscribe to mobile services, closing the gap on the average for developed markets (87%).”

Assuming that smartphones grow at the same rate as new mobile subscribers, we will most likely continue seeing an increase in downloads in the Region of Latin America in the coming years.

3. Google Play is the leader store generating more than 74% of total app downloads in the Top 10 countries

Across the Top 10 countries with the highest number of downloads from the Top 500 apps from the category “all”, we’ve estimated that on average 74% of the downloads are generated from the Google Play Store.

The discrepancy between the Google Play Store and Apple App Store is the most significant in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico. In these countries at least 90% of total app downloads come from the Google Play Store.

Furthermore, we’ve estimated that only the US and Japan show a major preference for the Apple Store over the Google Play Store.

In the US the Apple App Store remains the most popular store with more than 63% of total downloads, however, Google Play is catching up capturing almost 40% of the market.

Percentage of downloads per store from the total number of downloads (Estimates from Top 500 apps from the category “all”, January to June 2019, Apple App Store and Google Play Store)

Source: AppTweak’s data

4. For the Google Play Store, India itself accounts for the same number of downloads generated from Brazil, Indonesia, US, and Russia all combined

We also estimated the 10 countries with the highest number of downloads in the Google Play Store and identified that there is a huge difference in the number of downloads accordingly to the position of the country.

For example, India which is standing in the 1st position of downloads from the Google Play Store, registered more than 5 Bn downloads itself.

This represents a difference of more than 3.3 Bn downloads than Brazil (2nd position) and more than 4 Bn downloads than Russia (5th position) and the rest.

Total number of downloads for the Google Play Store (Estimates from Top 500 from the category “all”, January to June 2019, Google Play Store)

Source: AppTweak’s data

Excluding India, the Top 9 countries have an average of 897 Mi total downloads on the Google Play Store.

Map of countries with the highest total of downloads on the Google Play Store (Estimates from Top 500 from the category “all” from January to June 2019)

Source: AppTweak’s data

5. The number of downloads in the Apple App Store in the US is less than half the number of downloads in the Google Play Store in India

We’ve estimated that from the Top 500, the US generates the most downloads for the Apple App Store from the category “All” from January to June 2019. However, this number of downloads only represents 42% the downloads generated from the Google Play Store in India, during the same period.

The discrepancy between downloads per country is even bigger on the Apple App Store than on the Google Play Store. On the Apple App Store, the US generates 6 times more downloads than Japan.

Total number of downloads for the Apple Store (Estimates from Top 500, from the category “all”, January to June 2019)

Source: AppTweak’s data

Furthermore, we’ve estimated that no country besides the US has been able to surpass the threshold of 340 Mi total downloads from January to June 2019.

Actually, there is a difference of more than 1.7 Bn downloads between the United States and Japan. This trend is very different than the one on Google Play, where 4 countries have generated more than1 Bn downloads by themselves.

Map of countries with the highest total number of downloads on the Apple App Store from the Top 500 category “All” from January to June 2019

6. On average, an app needs 4x more daily downloads to reach Top 10 Charts on Google Play than on iOS for the category “All”

Finally, we’ve estimated how many daily downloads an app needs to generate to reach the Top 10 Charts in the category ‘All’ in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store and found some relevant differences based on our estimations.

First, we’ve identified that on average, in these 10 countries, an app needs 71,000 daily downloads to reach the Top 10 Charts for the category “All” in the Google Play Store.

This average is mainly skewed by India, where an app needs on average 289,000 daily downloads to reach Top 10 Charts.

Average number of daily downloads needed to reach Top 10 Charts per country for the Google Play Store (Estimates from the category “All”, January to June 2019, Google Play Store)

Source: AppTweak’s data

However, contrary to Google Play, the number of daily downloads needed on the Apple Store to reach Top 10 Charts of the category “All” is only 17,000. This represents a difference of more than 4 times the average of daily downloads needed on Google Play to reach Top 10 Charts.

Average number of daily downloads needed to reach Top 10 Charts for the category “All” , per country for the Apple App Store (Estimates from the 1st Jan to 30th Jun, App Store)

Source: AppTweak’s data

TLDR:

1. India is the country with the highest number of downloads with more than 5 billion downloads coming from the Top 500 apps of the All category of both Stores.
2. Brazil and Mexico have made it to the Top 10 countries with the highest number of downloads
3. Across the Top 10 countries with the highest number of downloads, we’ve estimated that on average, 74% of the downloads are generated from the Google Play Store.
4. In the Google Play store, India accounts for the same number of downloads as Brazil, Indonesia, US and Russia all combined
5. The number of total downloads from the United States for the App Store represents less than half of the number of total downloads registered in India in the Google Play
6. We’ve estimated that for the list of 10 countries an app needs 71,000 average daily downloads to reach the Top 10 Charts for the category “All” in the Google Play Store, versus 17,000 average daily downloads on the Apple Store

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