Webrage

• Webrage: “Smartphone Technical Marketing Seminar”

The seminar is held June 25th at 2:30pm.  Sign up here for the seminar “Smartphone Technical Marketing”.

Androider

• Androider: “Global apps market by Distimo CEO”

This seminar will be held June 26th in Tokyo, for invitees only.

Ad Innovation

• Ad innovation: “The updated App Market Trend by Distimo”

This seminar will be held June 26th at 7pm. Sign up here for the seminar “The updated App Market Trend by Distimo”.

Mobile Content Forum

• Mobile Content Forum: “MCF Monthly Seminar”

Mobile Content Forum is the biggest mobile content related companies association in Japan. This seminar will be held June 27th at 3:30pm. Sign up here for this montly seminar.

Meet

Want to meet Vincent in Tokyo? Sign up for one of the seminars or send us a note.

This webinar is available on YouTube and on Slideshare. If you have any questions or feedback regarding the webinar, please let us know.

For those of you interested in data about the most popular free, paid and grossing applications on daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly levels, Distimo’s leaderboards are a great resource for further research. These leaderboards list applications and publishers per country and per category for the Apple App Store for iPhone, the Apple App Store for iPad and Google Play.
Combining the data from the monthly leaderboards across all countries with enriched Distimo AppIQ data allows us to analyze the most successful apps worldwide, as presented in this blog post.

Top Free Applications

King.com Limited remains the king of top free applications in the Apple App Store with their app: Candy Crush Saga on rank 1. The new application Fast & Furious 6: The Game by Kabam is currently ranked on 2, followed by Gameloft’s Iron Man 3 on rank 3. YouTube is continuously listed – this month on rank 4. A new member can be found on rank 5: Angry Birds Friends by Rovio. This app was just published in the beginning of the month and made it already to the most popular free apps for May.

For the Google Play store the leading positions for free applications did not change. Facebook is still ranked on 1 and WhatsApp Messenger is ranked on 2, just as last month. The steady high popularity of the WhatsApp Messenger was interesting enough to take a deeper look, you can find the results in our latest publication.

Further in the rankings the Facebook Messenger App can be found on rank 3 skipping Skype, which is now on rank 4. Candy Crush Saga (the leader of the free Apple App Store applications) made it on rank 5 (surpassing Instagram) as the only game in company of the leading communication/ social networking apps.

Comparing both stores, we can confirm the trend from previous months: the leading category in the free Apple App Store ranking is gaming, whereas Google Play’s top 5 is strong on communication and social networking.

Top Paid Applications

The WhatsApp Messenger application remains the most popular paid application in the Apple App Store. The following leading positions continue to have a strong presence in the game category. Along with this, we can welcome Heads Up! by Warner Bros. as a new top game ranked on 2.
While Minecraft holds its position on rank 3, Survivalcraft, a new published game in this category, follows on rank 4 about one month after the initial release in May.
The new entry from last month: Pou was able to keep a position in the top listing on rank 5.

All top 5 Google Play paid applications listed have been the same since March, but the order has changed once again. Swift Key Keyboard continues to lead the ranking followed by Titanium Backup PRO Key root on rank 2. The Music application Poweramp reconquers its previous position on rank 3 above the Nova Launcher on rank 4 and Minecraft – the only game – is found on rank 5 in May.

Similar to the top 5 there weren’t many changes in the top 10 either. The only new entry in the most popular paid applications on Google Play is Swype Keyboard, listed on Rank 7.

As the gaming category is strongly represented in the Apple App Store again, the leading categories for paid applications on Google Play show a broad mix, focused on productivity and tools, music, personalization, with a weaker presence of games.

Most Revenue Generating Applications

Based on our estimations in line with the public announcement of the great success GungHo is seeing, Puzzle & Dragons is the top revenue generating application in the Apple App Store. King.com Limited follows closely with Candy Crush Saga on rank 2 in a neck-and-neck race with Supercell’s Clash of Clans, which is now on rank 3. Supercell’s second app ranked in the top revenue category is Hay Day on rank 4. In May we can also present another new member to watch: Kabam entered the top 5 with The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth on rank 5.

The most revenue generating applications are frequently free apps with in-app purchases. All applications in this top 5 use the freemium business model. Looking at the revenue on a more detailed level e.g. for Candy Crush Saga, we can point out that two thirds of the revenue are generated through the iPad app and one third comes in from the iPhone app.

The top ranking for apps with the most revenue for Google Play has also some new names to list in May. Yes – as you may expect – Puzzle & Dragons remains at the top on rank 1, but this month we can see a rising performance for the messaging application LINE ranked on 2. The LINE Corporation continues to be successful with their game LINE WIND runner new on rank 3. For both apps the majority of the revenue is generated in Japan.
Another strong player in Japan is the new entry to the top 5 in May プロ野球PRIDE by COLOPL, Inc. on rank 4. The revenue of this free sports game was solely generated in Japan and started to increase strongly in the beginning of May. Candy Crush Saga lost a rank compared to last month and can now be found on rank 5.

As opposed to the free and paid top rankings, gaming apps prove to be successful on Google Play when it comes to total revenue. Just as last month, the messenger application LINE is surrounded by only games in the top 5 revenue generating applications.

All data presented in this report is available in Distimo AppIQ.

In the last week of May our Director Business Development Richard Pidgeon and our Business Development Partner Nicole Leong were at Game Connection Asia in Shanghai. They met a lot of Chinese game developers who are eager to make it big in the world of mobile gaming…

San Francisco & Los Angeles

Please meet our Director Business Development, West Coast, Leslie Moniz at Inside Social Apps, June 6 – 7 in San Francisco. Inside Social Apps brings together the entire app ecosystem in an interactive environment where attendees can quickly advance their knowledge and practical skills.

We will also be attending E3, “the world’s premier trade show for computer and video games and related products”. Leading computer and video game companies, business partners, media and industry analysts from more than 100 countries will converge on the Los Angeles Convention Center. This will take place June 11 – 13, Distimo’s Leslie Moniz will be there and able to meet.

Saint Petersburg & London

The White Nights Conference in Saint Petersburg is “the largest European mobile gaming conference”, with more than 800 mobile game developers / publishers and more than 400 companies. Distimo’s Richard Pidgeon will be a key speaker at the conference, which will take place June 27 – 28.

Richard Pidgeon will also be speaking at App Promotion Summit in London, July 11. This conference is, like the name suggests, focussed on the major issue of how to ensure that as many people as possible know about your app.

All data mentioned in this report covers April 2013 and was collected directly from Distimo’s AppIQ , which contains download and revenue estimations on a daily basis. This publication presents data from six applications: Rage of Bahamut and Blood Brothers (RPG) by Mobage, Final Fantasy III by Square Enix, World at Arms by Gameloft, WhatsApp Messenger by WhatsApp, Inc. and The Simpsons: Tapped Out by Electronic Arts.

Some Applications and Publishers are winning on Google Play

Mobage is a developer that has gained similar revenue numbers in the Apple App Store and Google Play: $5.1M in Google Play and $5.6M in the Apple App Store during April 2013 in the United States.

Blood Brothers by Mobage generated more revenue in Google Play than in the Apple App Store in the United States. In April 2013, a total of $1.8M was gained in both stores combined; 61% of the revenue was generated in Google Play and 39% came from the Apple App Store.

Google Play vs. Apple App Store Globally

A great tool to analyze the performance of applications in different stores on a country level is Distimo’s Command & Conquer in Analytics, available through AppIQ. This feature enables the visualization of the success of an app per country on a world map. We used this tool in this month’s report to study which store is winning in which country for three applications: Final Fantasy III by Square Enix, World at Arms by Gameloft and WhatsApp Messenger by WhatsApp Inc.

In April 2013, Gameloft’s World on Arms generated more revenue in Google Play than it did in the Apple App Store in United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Finland, India, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Israel, Ireland, and Hong Kong. This list includes not only Asian countries, but also some large European countries. Moreover,  Final Fantasy III by Square Enix is winnig in Google Play in even more countries.

Extraordinary is the case of WhatsApp Messenger published by WhatsApp Inc. This messenger application is popular in Google Play and in the Apple App Store and is free in the former store and paid in the Apple App Store. Despite this monetization difference, this application made more money in Google Play than in the Apple App Store in Germany, Italy, and Spain.

The Apple App Store is still most beneficial

Although the examples clearly suggest that the balance is shifting between the Apple App Store and Google Play in terms of total revenue, this does not mean that this applies to all applications and publishers – especially not in the United States.  The daily revenue of applications in the top 200 grossing in the Apple App Store in the U.S. was $5.1M in April 2013. This is still 4.6 times higher than the 200 best performing applications in Google Play, which had daily revenue of $1.1M. However, looking at the whole store (graph above), Google Play’s piece of the pie, compared to the Apple App Store, has increased significantly over last six months. While only 19% of the combined revenue came from Google Play in November 2012, this share went up by 8 percentage points to 27% in April 2013.

Download the full Publication

In the publication you will find much more detailed information about the comparison between the Apple App Store and Google Play in terms of revenue. Please download the full publication here.
The press kit including all image files is also available.

So what can you do with AppIQ for Amazon Appstore? Besides tracking what volumes are being generated per app in this store specifically, it’s also very interesting to start comparing app revenues across different stores.

Disney’s Temple Run: Oz daily Android revenues compared

Below screenshot from AppIQ shows daily estimated revenue for Temple Run: Oz in both Amazon Appstore and Google Play (US). Very interesting to discover that the daily revenues from Amazon Appstore are increasing significantly compared to the revenues generated by the same title in Google Play. During the last days the daily Amazon Appstore revenue has even overtaken Google Play.

Benchmark your Amazon Appstore performance

If you are a developer with apps in the Amazon Appstore, you can now also compare your own daily downloads and revenues with that of any competing app. Want to see what your market share is based on full Android coverage in Google Play and Amazon Appstore? Find out if a competitor is monetizing very well with a specific pricing model in Amazon Appstore? Figure out what volumes are generated by a specific ranking in the store? All this and a lot more can be done by using our free App Analytics to track your own apps and then subscribing to AppIQ for the competing volumes.

Amazon Appstore Top Apps

Below the top applications of April 2013 are shown for Amazon Appstore and Google Play. One of the most notable differences between Google Play and the Amazon Appstore is the amount of games in the Top 10 apps. The list of top applications of Google Play shows only 3 out of 10 applications that are games, whereas the top ten applications of the Amazon Appstore show 8 out of 10 applications that are games. With an AppIQ subscription the daily download and revenue volumes of each of this titles are also displayed in the below interface.

Google Play Top Apps

Get started with Distimo AppIQ

Interested in AppIQ? This is available for developers and financial services companies. Please find more information about available subscription plans in our product sheet.

The presentation is now available via Slideshare. If you have any questions or feedback regarding the presentation, please let us know.

	New York office Nikole Kiralis VP Business Development – Financial Services nikole@distimo.com Nikole is responsible for leading Distimo’s global business development efforts within the financial services sector. She has nearly 15 years experience working in the financial services and analytics sector, and gained the bulk of her experience at Datamonitor, Celent and Forrester Research.

San Francisco office Leslie Moniz Director Business Development – US West Coast leslie@distimo.com Leslie has a successful history of sales within the mobile sector, and oversees all West Coast U.S. sales and business development initiatives. She previously held roles as West Coast Performance Sales Manager at Jumptap and Sales Manager at InMobi, where she was responsible for building core business relationships.

	London office Richard Pidgeon Director Business Development – EMEA richard@distimo.com Richard is responsible for leading business development efforts in the EMEA region. He previously spent over 15 years working in the mobile ecosystem and gained the majority of his experience at Vodafone and Nokia.

Singapore office Nicole Leong Business Development Partner – Asia nicole@accelerasia.com Nicole has 6 years experience working in the eCommerce sector both in London and New York. She started out in Barclays Capital on the graduate program where she rotated onto various parts of the bank and then moved on to TIM Group as a client account manager.

Our partner in Japan Did you know about our partner in Japan, interarrows? We have been working with interarrows for over a year, they are our local contact in Japan for companies interested in AppIQ. Contact them for local enquiries through: takahashi@interarrows.com.

Read the full press release here.

AppIQ users can also see the estimated downloads and revenues per publisher. Per store publisher rankings are based on respectively number of free downloads, number of paid downloads or total revenue. Get an insight in who the real competitors are: use the Top Publishers tab in your leaderboard!

Top Apps versus Top Publishers

To see the differences, let us take a closer look at the top 10 free applications in the U.S. for April 2013 and the top 10 publishers of free applications.

TOP APPS

If you look at the top free applications in the category Top overall in the U.S. for April, you’ll find that the publishers of the top 10 applications are: Vine Labs, Inc.(1) – King.com Limited(2) – SEGA(3) – Snapchat, Inc.(4) – Warner Bros.(5) – Google, Inc.(6) – Google, Inc.(7) – Ninjafish Studios(8) – Anton Vashinsky(9) – Burbn, Inc.(10).

TOP PUBLISHERS

If you look at the top free publishers in the category Top Overall in the U.S. for April, you’ll find that the top 10 publishers are: Google, Inc.(1) – Ninjafish Studios(2) – Apple(3) – Vine Labs, Inc.(4) – King.com Limited(5) – Zynga Inc.(6) – SEGA(7) – Snapchat, Inc.(8) – Gameloft(9) – Disney(10).

Although Apple, Zynga, Gameloft and Disney are not shown in the Top 10 free Apps, they belong to the 10 most important players in the apps market. And, on the other hand, Warner Bros, Anton Vashinsky and Burbn, Inc. published the best performing free applications, but they cannot compete in the Top 10 publishers of free apps.

In April Google is a steady number one publisher, although the Google top applications Youtube and Google Maps both dropped three ranks to respectively 6 and 7. AppIQ users can also see that both applications were responsible for 1,8 million downloads, which together form half of the total downloads of the Google applications (7,2 million downloads). Google, Inc. is followed by Ninjafish Studios, who made a huge leap from rank 73 in March to rank 2 in April. Obviously the application Dentist Office (ranked 8 in Top Apps) is the main contributor to this jump. Ninjafish Studios gained a total revenue of over $ 200.000, with 4,6 million downloads. As you can see the Top Publisher leaderboards help to look at the appmarket at a higher level.

Get started with Distimo App Analytics

Not using the best App Analytics yet? Just sign up for a free account to get started immediately.

Get started with Distimo AppIQ

Interested in AppIQ? Please contact us!

Top Free Applications

The most downloaded free application worldwide in Google Play as well as in Apple App Store was the same as last month. So Candy Crush Saga was again the most downloaded app globally in the Apple App Store, while Facebook was again the most popular application in Google Play in April 2013. The top 5 free downloaded applications for Apple App Store has three new entries: Sonic Dash (2), Injustice: Gods Among Us (4) and Dentist Office (5). Remarkably Sonic Dash was a top paid app last month and now it is a top free app, as it became a free application with in-apps in the final days of March 2013. The other two entries are newcomers, both were released in April 2013.

The top 5 free downloaded applications for Google Play showed one new name. Instagram joined the top free most downloaded global applications in Google Play in April 2013, replacing Temple Run 2 on rank 5. Google Play’s top 5 contains only communication/social networking apps and no games. On the contrary, four out of five apps in the top 5 free applications for Apple App Store were games: Candy Crush Saga (1), Sonic Dash (2) , Injustice: Gods Among Us (4) and Dentist Office (5).

Top Paid Applications

Like in March 2013 four out of five applications were games in Apple’s top 5, based on most paid downloads. Temple Run: Oz was the game that was downloaded most frequently across all countries in this store. Again, WhatsApp Messenger defeated all games and was the most downloaded paid application during April 2013. However there are also some changes as Cut the Rope: Time Travel (4) and Pou (5) are new entries in the top most downloaded paid applications. Zeptolab UK Limited has another a winner on their hands as Cut the Rope: Time Travel was just released mid April.

In Google Play there is a stable top 5, the same apps in almost the same order are listed as in March 2013. The only change is a switch between Minecraft (now 3, in March 4) and Poweramp Full Version Unlocker (now 4, in March 3). With SwiftKey Keyboard as leader, paid utility applications were more popular than games in Google Play. Only Minecraft made it as game in the top 5 in terms of paid downloads in Google Play.

Most Revenue Generating Applications

Supercell was still one of the most successful developers in the Apple App Store in April 2013. With only two apps in this store, Clash of Clans (1) and Hay Day (3), and both in the top global top 5, players are still enjoying Supercell’s games. Another stayer in the top is Candy Crush Saga. The two new names in the top are Injustice: Gods Among Us from Warner Bros. (4) and Modern War of Funzio, Inc. (5). The top is dominated by free apps with in-apps as all apps in this top 5 use the freemium business model.

In April 2013 you still see that the apps in the top 5 based on revenue for Google Play included mainly apps that were localized in Asia and hence generating most revenue from these countries instead of the US. There is an interesting newcomer in the top 5: LINE: Free Calls & Messages. The games that are related to Kakao have generated a lot of revenue in Korea, which resulted in two top five positions in Google Play, 윈드러너 for Kakao (Windrunner) and 다함께 차차차 for Kakao (Everybody Cha Cha Cha!), while LINE: Free Calls & Messages gained its revenue almost solely in Japan.

All data is available in Distimo AppIQ.