Global App and Game Ratings Cross 14 Billion
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #102 - Is the App Store Ready for This?. Check out the full article for more insights.
I talk about ratings a lot in my Keyword Teardowns because they've become one of the most important components for getting discovered in the App Store and Google Play.
One thing I was very curious about, and the kind I don't get to see when analyzing keywords or apps, is the global volume of ratings. When I looked, I discovered the stores are getting close to hitting a new milestone.
I summed up all the ratings for every app and game across all countries, and that total is now 14.1 Billion. Yup, billion, with a B. That's almost double the world's population (according to Wikipedia).
70%, or 9.8B ratings, come from apps and games on Google Play. The remaining 30%, or 4.3B ratings, came from apps and games on the App Store. It's also worth noting that a little over 2B ratings belong to apps and games that are no longer in the store.
Bonus: the average rating is 4.09 on Google Play and 1.8 on the App Store. I didn't get these confused, I promise. I suspect the higher average on Google Play is a result of having many more apps that don't have a single rating, which I excluded from my calculation, vs. the App Store, where it's easier to get a few ratings and those bring the average down a lot.
Thanks to additions from both Apple and Google that enable developers to easily ask their users to provide a rating, I only see this total growing faster, stores relying on it more for discovery, and consumers relying on it more as a measure of popularity.
If you have an app or game out there, you'll need more ratings to stay competitive.
App Intelligence for Everyone!
The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.
Are you a Journalist? You can get access to our app and market intelligence for free through the Appfigures for Journalists program. Contact us for more details.
All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
