A few weeks ago I gave the opening talk at the App Promotion Summit in NYC and being the keynote I wanted to summarize where our entire industry is in a single graphic.
Not an easy thing to do considering there are so many ways to look at the industry but I managed to find the one trend everyone who's working on an app or game should be aware of - whether you're a indie developer, a marketer, or an executive resposible for an app.
The trend is simple - Downloads are trending down while revenue is rising.
The easiest way to see it at the macro (market) level is by using the Mobile Download Index and Mobile Revenue Index:
As of last week, the Mobile Revenue Index for the US App Store hit 473.91. Google Play's was a lot lower, at 262.93, but still high.
Downloads were not...
The US App Store's Mobile Download Index sat at 70.96 and Google Play's at 61.24. That's very low...
In case you're not familiar, the Mobile Download Index and Mobile Revenue Index track the performance of the top apps and compare them to the point in time in the past. Index values greater than 100 mean growth and under 100 mean decline.
You can read more about how the two indices work and how to access them here.
By this simple definition, revenue is growing rapidly while downloads are declining. Looking at the index values over time, we can see a pretty clear trend that's almost perfectly consistent with the exception of 2020 (aka covid times).
And while this data is specific to the US the both indices are available for many other countries and almost all major countries display the same trend. Some countries, like India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and a few others, are displaying growth in downloads and revenue. Those are countries that only started sprouting recently.
Generally, those countries have a much lower volume, but India is an exception, given it's large population and growing access to mobile devices, especially Androids.
As a developer, marketer, or really anyone responsible for app growth, this is the trend you have to watch. Fewer downloads and more apps than ever means you're going to have to work harder to get every download. App Store Optimization matters, optimizing your ad spend matters, and optimizing your onboarding matters.
And once you do get the download, you'll need to convert it into revenue as best as you can, because the odds of getting a paying user are higher - if you try.
There are a few good AF Chats and other streams about optimizing on our YouTube Channel I'd highly recommend checking out.
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