According to market researchers, smartphone owners are investing more and more money in subscriptions, especially for streaming and dating apps. Apple users are therefore more willing to spend.
Strong growth in subscription -Sales in smartphone apps: According to an estimate by market researchers, users spent around 18.3 billion US dollars on in-app subscriptions last year, 41 percent more than in the previous year 2020. This is based on an analysis by the Market research firm SensorTower, which considers the top 100 subscription apps in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. Games were excluded.
Much more subscription revenue in iPhone apps
iOS users spent $13.5 billion on subscriptions, almost three times more than Android users at $4.8 billion, explains Sensor Tower. However, subscription apps from Google’s Play Store seem to be slowly catching up: The growth in sales compared to the same period in 2020 is significantly higher for subscriptions in Android apps at 78 percent than for iPhone and iPad apps – the market researchers are recording an increase of 31 there percent.
The top ten subscription apps are almost exclusively video and music streaming services as well as dating apps. Google One is also listed on Android, Google’s counterpart to Apple’s subscription service iCloud+, the latter is not included in the figures.
Proportion of subscriptions is growing
All in all, subscriptions make up another 14 percent A relatively manageable part of the huge sales with in-app purchases, which are estimated to be more than 130 billion US dollars worldwide in 2021, according to the analysts – but the subscription share is slowly increasing. The majority of in-app revenue is generated from games, which mostly rely on individual sales for in-game currency and digital items.
Apple and Google retain up to 30 percent commission on in-app purchases and subscriptions, so far these have had to be settled via the payment interfaces of the platform operators. In the USA, Europe and other regions there are draft laws aimed at opening up the app platforms.
