It might sound hyperbolic but there’s an app for almost everything these days. From online delivery of food, groceries to ‘managing’ your electric toothbrush, people with a certain level of disposable incomes use apps for day-to-day stuff. And clearly, people aren’t shy of spending on these apps. According to a report by Sensor Tower, worldwide consumer spending on mobile apps was $33.6 billion, across Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store in the third quarter of 2021.
This number includes overall consumer spending on in-app purchases, premium apps, and subscriptions. Year-on-year this number has grown from $29.2 billion to $33.6 billion.

Android leads the way in games, app spends

Sensor Tower attributes the growth to Android smartphone users whose spends grew by 18.6%. Compared to last year, the amount spent on Google Play Store grew from $10.2 billion to $12.1 billion.
Compared to the Play Store, Apple’s App Store saw relatively modest growth. The revenue from App Store grew 13.2% — from $19 billion to $21.5 billion compared to last year. “As in prior periods, consumers spent about 1.8 times as much on Apple’s marketplace when compared to Google’s,” states the report by Sensor Tower.
The report by Sensor Tower also reveals that mobile game spending grew 7.7% year on year to $22.4 billion globally in the third quarter of 2021, driven primarily by Google’s marketplace. Consumer spending in mobile games on the App Store grew 5.6% to $13.1 billion from $12.4 billion, while Google Play spending climbed 10.7 % Y/Y to $9.3 billion from $8.4 billion in the year-ago period. “Although consumer spending in mobile games continues to climb, the growth experienced by the category has begun to normalise,” mentions the Sensor Tower report.