Given that the majority of time spent on smartphones is in apps, it is appropriate to look at what apps are being downloaded in order to understand what people are actually doing.
Below is a list of top downloads in various countries, taken from App Annie’s statistics (iPhone and Google Play: The list is too long to put on this blog post, so please go App Annie to see all the entries).
You can immediately see that the lists for iOS App Store and Google Play are very different;
- Google Play is dominated by messaging and communication applications. Specifically, Facebook, Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, Skype and Instagram.
- On the other hand, iPhone users seem to be downloading a lot of other stuff. The top ranking apps are not dominated messaging and communication apps. There are a lot of games and some music apps.
Now what does this mean? I suspect that this is telling us that Android users as a whole are using their smartphones for the essential tasks and the essential tasks only. By essential tasks, I mean communication. That is after all, what phones are for and what feature phones also did quite well with SMS.
Messaging and communication apps dominate Google Play but it is also certain that iPhone users download these apps too. Hence the dominance of this category on Google Play simply suggests that Android users don’t download much else on average. On the other hand, iPhone users download a lot more so the essential communications apps are lower in the rankings.
For example, App Annie has recently reported that Google Play worldwide quarterly downloads exceeded iOS App Store downloads by around 60 percent. However, Google Play downloads are most likely dominated by the essential messaging and communication apps, with little space left for others. If you are an independent app developer, the Google Play opportunity is probably much much lower than the total downloads number suggests.
Naofumi Kagami 