Android and iOS are the two biggest mobile operating systems in the world. Android is firmly holding the number one spot due to the fact that a ton of manufacturers all over the world who are producing devices which are based on Android. That being said, Android has been crushing iOS as far as sheer app download number go for a while now, but iOS apps have always earned more money than Android apps on a global scale. Some reports were claiming that iOS did the same in 2014, but according to Digi-Capital‘s info, that’s simply not true.
Digi-Capital claims that Android apps actually managed to crush iOS in 2014, mainly thanks to China. Confused? Well, as some of you might know, there are a number of app stores in China which are not directly connected to the Google Play Store. iOS is still ahead of Android if you compare App Store and Google Play Store, but if you take into account all Android app stores in China, Android is ahead of the App Store. China actually has a number of such app stores, and the biggest ones are Baidu, Qihoo 360, Tencent and Wandoujia. How big are these app stores? Well, they’re huge, really huge.
If you take a look at the ‘Global app stores download volume share 2014’ graph below this article, you’ll see that Baidu on its own, actually had more app downloads that the Google Play Store in 2014, which is just mind blowing. Tencent and Qihoo 360 are also really big and each of them was close to iOS in terms of sheer app downloads in 2014. What’s interesting here though, if you combine all those Chinese app stores, they earn less money than both Google Play Store and App Store separately, but when you combine them with the Google Play Store… well, iOS takes the back seat.
One thing is for sure, the amount of apps in all of those app stores is constantly rising, and the same trend will continue this year as well. Developers are working round the clock in order to push out an app which hasn’t been seen before or an app which will be so much better than the rest, so that people are interested in downloading it and even purchasing it or the content from it. Android marketing is very important and can make a huge difference when app success is in question, and developers should definitely keep that in mind before they launch an app. It will certainly be interesting to see how will each of these App Stores fare in 2015, can Google Play Store actually beat App Store on its own, or will it need help from its Chinese cousins in order to do that? Well, we’ll have to wait in order to find out.