Two Years in, Shop Is Having Its Best Season Yet!

Ariel Ariel
12/2/22

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - (Not) So Confusing. Check out the full article for more insights.


A couple of years ago, Shopify rebranded its package tracking app Arrive into a hub for shopping that brought Shopify's payment system into millions of devices and also gave local businesses using Shopify visibility.

Back in 2020, I thought this was one of the most clever moves in the shopping industry.

Shop has grown its downloads every holiday season since launch, but 2022 is going to be the biggest of all.

Shop's best season is the holiday season when everyone is buying something online. Shop's shopping features are still not that mainstream, nor is its payment system, but with every holiday season, those features make their way into millions of pockets.

To see how Shop's growing, and estimate what the holiday season will look like, we can compare the downloads from past Novembers with the one that just ended.

  • 2020 - 2.6M downloads
  • 2021 - 2.6M downloads
  • 2022 - 3.4M downloads

If you're looking at the chart, I highlighted those so you don't look at December by accident. I did that because November of 2022 was bigger than December, Shop's best month of the year, for both previous years.

If downloads continue following the same pattern, I expect Shop to make its way into 4.2M new iOS and Android devices.

That's big for Shop but also for the payments industry. Why? Because every download of Shop means another user can now pay with Shop Pay, a service that competes with Apple Pay and other payment services.

It's a clever step in Shopify's aggressive strategy to take over the marker. I call it aggressive, and if you've used Shop Pay you know this already because Shop Pay doesn't wait for you to activate it but rather automatically springs into action whenever possible, attempting to streamline the payment in supporting sites/apps before you even ask.

The first time it did that to me I was pretty confused and had no idea what it even was, but... the convenience eventually won me over. I imagine that's a part of the strategy.

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.

Tagged: #shopping

Related Resources

It Finally Happened! The Highest-Earning Apps in the World in October
Insights
It Finally Happened! The Highest-Earning Apps in the World in October

I'm going to start this in reverse because the thing we've been waiting to happen has finally happened. If you've been f...

A Few New Faces! The Most Downloaded Apps in the World in October
Insights
A Few New Faces! The Most Downloaded Apps in the World in October

October is behind us so we crunched the numbers and ranked the most downloaded mobile apps in the world. While I don't h...