App sales are up an astounding 40% this year and Apple is leading the charge

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In the first quarter of this year, total smartphone app sales are up 40% to $32 billion over last year, and Apple is still leading the charge. This is evident in the surge in popularity of mobile apps and games over the course of the last year during the pandemic.

A report from App Annie, an app analytics company, shows the increase in spending on apps so far this year. The report shows that as more people are staying home looking for entertainment, spending on smartphone apps has increased by almost $10 billion since the same time last year.

All kinds of apps saw a rise in popularity during the last year. Gaming apps seemed to be the biggest winners with around a 30% increase in revenue, up to $22 billion across iOS and Android in the first quarter of 2021. There has also been a surge in finance apps, as well as health and fitness apps as people look for ways to stay active at home.

Apple has been the biggest winner in terms of overall revenue gain so far this year, though both Android and iOS saw relatively similar growth. Apple users have spent around $21 billion so far on smartphone apps while Android users make up the other $11 billion. Both companies saw around a 40% gain in revenue over last year’s numbers.

According to the report mentioned above, messaging app Signal, which has a high focus on user privacy, has been the largest growing app so far this year. This is likely due to the recent update in WhatsApp’s privacy policy, which many users weren’t happy with. I’d expect Signal to continue to grow in popularity, as more and more people pushback against Facebook-owned apps like WhatsApp.

It has been a great year so far for smartphone apps, and this trend is almost certain to continue. Even though more and more people are getting vaccinated and things are beginning to open back up, we will still be seeing people spending more time at home, and that means investing more time and money into smartphone apps.

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