Apps on smartphones do all sorts of things, ranging from checking the weather, providing stock quotes, messaging friends and family, productivity, games, and so on, but have you ever wondered which category actually accounts for the most money made in an app store? Well according to the folks at Midia Research, it turns out that the gaming category actually accounts for the most.
Based on their findings, it seems that mobile games account for 84.9% of app store revenue. This is based on the top 700 grossing apps from both the iTunes App Store and the Google Play Store. This hardly comes as a surprise especially since earlier this year it was revealed that mobile gaming revenue was on the rise.
Midia Research also notes that 50 companies alone accounted for 81% of these top grossing apps across both app stores. So with gaming accounting for the majority of app store revenue, what’s next? Well turns out that social networking comes in second place at 4.1%, followed by dating apps at 3.9%, and travel apps at 2.3%.
According to the study’s authors (via The Guardian) Mark Mulligan and Karol Severin, “The impact of games is doubly strong because no other genre of apps has learned how to make in-app payments work as effectively as games companies have. The app economy is, for now at least, a games economy.”
We guess if you’re looking to get into app development, perhaps developing games could be the way to go if you’re looking to earn some money.