Anime is Going Mainstream - The Highest-Earning Apps in the World
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - It's Game Time. Check out the full article for more insights.
I crunched the numbers and ranked the highest-earning mobile apps in the world in May, and let me tell you, May continues the trend April started.
Let's dive right into it:
TikTok was the highest-earning mobile app in the world in May. It earned a whopping $203M in net revenue - what Bytedance gets to keep after Apple and Google take their fees - according to our estimates.
That's an $11M increase from April - more than what most apps earn in a whole year!
Rival YouTube came in second in May with $131M of estimated net revenue. Also higher than April's total, but not by as much.
Disney+, Tinder, and Max round out the top five highest-earning apps in May. Each earned more in May than it did in April, and if you're comparing, had the exact same rank month after month.
That's actually what we see throughout all three lists - most apps kept their ranks. Just like April.
Some attribute this lack of movement to discovery but to me, it shows apps are putting more effort into optimizing revenue separately from features or marketing.
In the long term, that'll become a requirement.
Before we total this up I should mention Crunchyroll managed to squeeze into the top 10 in May with an impressive $36M haul.
Crunchyroll is on fire these days as Anime is gaining popularity in the mainstream.
Our App Intelligence shows that together, the top 10 highest-earning apps in May brought in $791M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play (but mostly from Google Play).
That's about 4% higher than April's total and gets the top apps just a little bit closer to a big B.
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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.
