Mobile App Statistics from Sensor Tower for 2021

Ethan James 28 Feb 2022

Sensor Tower is a mobile game and app analytics platform. It regularly publishes curious static data that allows companies to evaluate consumer activity and adjust advertising campaigns.

According to the latest information for 2021, users have begun to spend more money (up 41%) on non-gaming applications that can be used by subscription. Incomes of such products’ developers grew from $13 to $18.3 billion. Consumers spent a total of $131 billion on in-app purchases last year. Of this volume, 14% is accounted for by various subscriptions. This statistic summarizes indicators around the world.

Speaking about the income from purchases of US users, the trend there is about the same. In total, residents of this region spent around $8.5 billion on 100 top-rated apps. In total, about $40 billion was spent on in-app purchases, 21% of which came from subscription apps. When compared with statistics for 2020, it is about 44% more. And the results for the fourth quarter show that 90 of the 100 most profitable products offer the subscription format.

Sensor Tower also compared App Store and Google Play user activity. Members of the former spend more on subscriptions than owners of Android devices. However, this distribution of costs is not a surprise. Apple’s digital store non-gaming app revenue was $13.5 billion last year, up 31% from 2020. By comparison, Google Play buyers spent $4.8 billion on subscriptions.

If we talk about Alphabet (aka Google) as a whole, its performance for 2021 is really impressive. The company’s total income is one of the highest. YouTube alone brought in $1.2 billion worldwide ($566.5 million in the US). Sensor Tower stats show that apps like Disney+ see revenue growth, so other services adopt the same approach. Do you use subscription-based products? If so, which ones?