iOS vs Android App Store Sales Revenue Gap

report · for knighthk in #systemcrafters · 2026-08-12 17:08 UTC

Research: compare app stores sales between android and iphone. it is well known apps do better on iphone, I want to see sources and a pretty graph with points and all of that though

iOS vs Android App Store Sales: The Revenue Gap Explained

TL;DR. Multiple industry trackers converge on the same picture for 2024: global app-store consumer spending hit roughly $150 billion, and Apple's App Store captured about 68% of it (~~$102–103 billion) versus roughly 32% (~~$47 billion) for Google Play — despite Android holding ~70% of the global smartphone install base [1][5][13][18]. On a per-user basis the gap is even starker: iOS users are reported to spend about $10.40/month on apps versus $1.40 on Android, and ARPU on iOS is projected to run 2.5–4× higher in 2025 [1][4].

The headline: iOS earns roughly twice what Google Play does on a fraction of the devices

Three independent write-ups citing Sensor Tower / data.ai-style figures land in the same range for 2024. Tekrevol and Appingine both report global app revenue of $150.1 billion, split 68% iOS / 32% Android — about $102B vs $48B [1][5]. Hubifi gives slightly more precise numbers in the same ballpark: $103.4B for the App Store and $46.7B for Google Play in 2024 [13]. Sensor Tower's own "2025 State of Mobile" recap confirms the $150B total and notes it was the first year in-app purchase revenue crossed that threshold, growing 13% year-over-year [18].

Looking forward, Backlinko projects consumer spending on the App Store at $142 billion in 2025 versus $65 billion on Google Play, keeping the split at 68.6% / 31.4% [7]. Appingine cites a similar forward projection of $161B for the App Store and $72B for Google Play [5]. The two forecasts disagree on absolute levels (~$142B vs $161B for iOS in 2025) but agree on the ratio.

A quick comparative chart

Consumer app-store spending, 2024 actuals (billions USD), from [1][5][13][18]:

Global total: $150.1B  ████████████████████████████████████████  100%

Apple App Store   ~$103B  ███████████████████████████▊              68%
   │
   ●──────────────────────────────────────────●
   │                                          
Google Play       ~$47B   █████████████                             32%
   ●───────────●

Per-user monthly app spend [1]:

iOS      $10.40   ██████████████████████████████████████
Android  $1.40    █████
                  (roughly 7× gap on Tekrevol's figure;
                   Ripenapps frames it as 2.5–4× ARPU [4])

Install base vs revenue share — the inversion that drives the story [1][4][5]:

                Smartphone share       App-revenue share
Android    ████████████████████ ~71%   █████████ 32%
iOS        ████████ ~29%               ███████████████████ 68%

Why the gap exists: monetization model, not just user count

The sources agree the disparity is structural, not incidental. Ripenapps describes iOS users as "conditioned to pay for premium experiences and subscription-based services, whereas Android users prefer free-with-ads models," and notes iOS conversion rates run higher partly because of Apple Pay integration and higher average order values [4]. Tekrevol quantifies the split from the other side: Android relies on ad-based revenue for 98% of free-app earnings, while iOS dominates subscriptions — subscriptions accounted for 73% of $66.8B in 2024 on iOS [1]. An older but consistent data point from App Annie: 98% of Google Play revenue comes from in-app purchases in free-to-download apps, and Hubifi notes 97% of Play Store apps are free to download [8][13].

Two illustrative single-app figures from Tekrevol and Appingine underline the divergence: TikTok reportedly pulls $208M on iOS, while a Google-first product like Google One earns $33M on Android [1][5]. iOS also captures 57% of the premium ($400+) phone segment and 78% of ultra-premium ($1000+), meaning the platform's user base skews wealthier — a demographic fact these blogs cite as the underlying driver [1].

Downloads tell the mirror-image story: Android takes roughly 70% of global downloads while iOS's smaller download volume converts at a higher rate [1]. Sensor Tower puts total 2024 downloads at 136 billion, roughly flat year-over-year [18].

Where the growth is coming from

Sensor Tower attributes most of 2024's growth to non-gaming apps, which grew 23% YoY, versus mobile gaming IAP at $81B and only 4% growth [18]. This matches Tekrevol's emphasis on subscription growth as iOS's engine [1]. Data.ai separately expected mobile game spending specifically to rebound to $111.4B in 2024 after peaking at $115.8B in 2021 and dipping to $107.5B in 2023 — a figure that includes third-party stores and so runs higher than Sensor Tower's App Store + Play-only $81B gaming number [16][18]. AI apps are a small but fast-emerging category at roughly $1.3B in IAP revenue in 2024 [18].

What is contested or uncertain

The 68/32 split is remarkably consistent across [1], [5], [7], and [13], which is both reassuring and a caveat: all of these blogs appear to draw from the same underlying trackers (Sensor Tower, data.ai), so their agreement is not fully independent confirmation. I could not directly verify the primary Statista series [9] because the source text has placeholder "[value]" fields rather than numbers.

A few specific tensions:

Absolute totals vary. Tekrevol/Appingine say $150.1B total for 2024 [1][5]; Hubifi's App Store + Play sum ($103.4B + $46.7B = $150.1B) matches [13]; Sensor Tower says $150B in IAP specifically [18]. These are close but measure slightly different things (gross consumer spending vs IAP-only).
2025 iOS forecasts diverge by ~$20B. Backlinko projects $142B [7], Appingine projects $161B [5]. Neither shows methodology in the excerpts.
The "iOS spends 7× more per user" claim ($10.40 vs $1.40) from Tekrevol [1] is notably larger than Ripenapps' framing of "2.5–4× higher ARPU" [4]. These may be measuring different things (raw spend vs ARPU normalized differently), but readers should treat the exact multiplier as approximate.
Apple's own $406B "billings and sales" figure for 2024 [10] is not comparable to the $103B revenue figure — it includes physical goods, ads, and services facilitated by the App Store, over 90% of which Apple takes no commission on. Do not confuse it with app-store consumer spending.
Sources are mostly SEO-style marketing blogs, not primary research. The one primary-ish source (Sensor Tower [18]) is itself commercial. Independent audits are absent from this evidence set.

Open questions

How much of the iOS revenue lead is causal (ecosystem, payment friction, subscription defaults) versus demographic (iPhone owners are simply higher-income)? [1] and [4] gesture at both without disentangling them.
Will regulatory action (EU DMA sideloading, US antitrust) or Google's rumored developer-registration changes [3] compress the gap by 2026–2027?
Do the third-party Android stores common in China and elsewhere close the real-world revenue gap materially? None of the cited sources address non-Google Android storefronts.
Given AI-app IAP is only ~$1.3B in 2024 [18], how quickly does that category scale, and does it favor one platform?

Figures

Sources

Generated by tink · sources are web pages; verify anything important.