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Google Play Revenues Come Mainly From Games, List Of Top Apps Released

By Jinger Jarrett
Published on: 15:57 PST, May 15, 2016

Google Play app data has revealed some surprises in which apps are performing the best in the Google Play store in terms of sales. Although there some surprises have been revealed, what isn’t a surprise is the amount of revenue generated by games.

The Next Web reports that the top grossing apps in the Google Play store come from Japan, and the most downloaded app in the store is the Facebook app. WhatsApp, which has been acquired by Facebook, is number two, with the Facebook Messenger coming in at number three. The only app in the top five that wasn’t owned by Facebook belongs to Cheetah, and it’s their Mobile Clean Master.

The Google Play app data came from a report that covered the period from 2012 through 2016, and the information came from the analytic apps company App Annie. The other Facebook app in the top five was Instagram, another Facebook company.

Familiar apps like Skype and Twitter made the top ten, while apps that may be lesser known in the U.S., Line and Viber from Japan, also made the list. Line and Viber are both apps that allow users to make free calls as well as message one another. Viber currently has over 711 million users worldwide.

As previously reported in Inquisitr, Google Play released an update to its Google Play store while Nintendo finally released its latest game as an app. The update released for Google Play makes downloading and updating apps from the store a much smoother process. Users had a choice of either updating the app by downloading the APK and updating manually or allowing the app to update on its own. Google rolled out the update gradually, so users had to wait for the automatic update.

Although phone and messaging apps dominated the top 10 most downloaded apps, games dominated the most downloads and cornered the market with 90 percent of total Play store revenue generated coming from games. The top grossing games were Puzzle & Dragons, Clash of Clans, and Monster Strike while the most downloaded game was Subway Surfers.

MCV reported that 90 percent of revenues from the Google Play store came from games. Downloads from the store have increased 3.8 times since 2012, and revenue went up 35.7 times while downloads from the Google Play store have outstripped the number of downloads that the iTunes store receives.

The best-selling Google Play games listed by the number of downloads were Subway Surfers, Candy Crush Saga, Pou, Temple Run 2 and Hill Climb Racing. Games that generated the most revenue were Puzzle & Dragons, Clash of Clans, Monster Strike, Candy Crush Saga and Game of War – Fire Age.

Android Headlines reported the top all-time apps for the Google Play store based on data released by App Annie. What was interesting about the data is that between 2015 and 2016 the countries that showed the highest amount of growth in the app market were Pakistan, Vietnam, and India. Although Line placed at number six in the top 10 apps to be downloaded, it earned more revenue to date than any other app in the Google Play store.

The creators of Line not only earned the most revenue, but the second and third apps to earn the most revenue in the Google Play store were Line Play and Line Manga, also owned by the same company. The fourth highest-grossing app of all time was Pandora Radio while KaoKao Talk came in fifth.

[Photo via Google/Google Play]

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