Global spending on in-app purchases, subscriptions, and premium apps in Apple’s App Store climbed to $19 billion in the third quarter of 2020, according to new data from analytics firm SensorTower. That was up from $14.5 billion from the same quarter in 2019, a 31 percent year-over-year increase.
Gaming and TikTok Generate Huge App Store Revenue
Spending on the Google Play Store did actually grow by a greater amount, 33.8 percent, over the same time period. However, the platform generated not much more than half of what the App Store did, with global revenue for the quarter coming in at $10.3 billion.
No surprise, as people remained at home gaming revenue surged. It was up 26.7 percent when compared to the same quarter last year, reaching $20.9 billion worldwide. Over half of that was from App Store users. Meanwhile, TikTok was the highest-earning non-game app in both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store over the quarter. Consumer spending around the app and its Chinese iOS version, Douyin, was up 800 percent year-over-year.
The data also showed that first-time installs in the last quarter hit 36.5 billion, up 23.3 percent from the same time last year. Around 8.2 billion of those were in the App Store.