iOS App Store Generated $41.5 Billion in Revenue for Apple in H1 2021

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 29 Jun 2021

iPhone App Store

The App Store has generated $41.5 billion in revenue for Apple in the first half of 2021. As per a Sensor Tower report, that’s a 22.1 percent growth compared to 2020.

While impressive, the App Store’s revenue growth has slowed down from last year. In 2020 for the same timeframe, the App Store reported a 29.3 percent increase in revenues. This was primarily led by the COVID-19 pandemic that forced millions of people worldwide to stay and work from home.

Nonetheless, despite the slower pace of growth, the App Store has been raking a massive amount of money for Apple every quarter. Sensor Tower claims that the iOS App Store managed to generate nearly 1.8x times the revenue of the Google Play Store during the same time period. The Play Store raked in revenues of $23.4 billion vs. the App Store’s $41.5 billion revenue.

At 30 percent, the revenue growth of the Google Play Store is impressive, though. During the first half of 2020, the store had generated revenues of $18 billion. Sensor Tower expects the Google Play Store to grow faster than the iOS App Store in 2021. In total, Sensor Tower states an estimated 72.5 billion apps were downloaded across both stores in H1, 2021, up from 71.3 billion in H1 2020. The total app installs on the App Store declined by 10.9 percent to 16.3 billion, possibly due to a change in user behavior.

TikTok was the dominant app in terms of revenue across both the App Store and Google Play Store in 2020 and the first half of 2021. Compared to H1 2020, Sensor Tower estimates that user spending surged to $920 million in TikTok during the same time period. That’s a massive growth of 74 percent year on year. YouTube was the second-highest non-gaming app with a consumer spending of around $564.7 million. Tinder was third in terms of revenue while Disney+ came in at number five.

[Via Sensor Tower]