• chevron_right

      Abysmal revenue stats of 30K mobile apps show why devs keep pushing for subs

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 12 March - 20:28

    Screenshot of App Store icon.

    Enlarge / Apple's App Store. (credit: Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images )

    Mobile app developers are expected to push subscriptions more aggressively over the next year. Numbers that RevenueCat recently shared examining over 30,000 apps suggest why: Most apps struggle to reach $1,000 per month in revenue.

    RevenueCat makes a subscription toolkit for mobile apps. The 7-year-old company's study shared today, as spotted by TechCrunch , said the firm examined apps using its in-app subscription SDKs. RevenueCat's report didn't list all apps studied but claims Reuters, Buffer, Goodnotes, PhotoRoom, and Notion as customers. The report claims that 90 percent of apps with an in-app-subscription platform use RevenueCat. The San Francisco-based company also claims to support "everything from niche indie apps to several of the top 100 subscription apps," which notably suggests that most of the top-100 subscription apps aren't included in this study.

    With these caveats in mind, the 120-page report still provides unique details about a claimed $6.7 billion in subscription revenue touching over 18,000 developers and 290 million subscribers using the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

    Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      The Ars Technica staff guide to the mobile apps we can’t live without

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 7 November - 14:00

    Young woman receiving notifications and commenting on social media posts with smart phone. People networking with technology. Social media addiction concept.

    Enlarge / Behold, a collection of apps we love. (credit: Oscar Wong / Getty Images)

    Senior Reviews Editor Samuel Axon

    Todoist basically runs my life—but that's OK, because it's a very well-designed app. There are a ton of to-do apps on the iPhone, but I went with this one because it's very flexible.

    For example, yeah, you can see a top-to-bottom to-do list like with many others, but you can view that same data as a Trello-like Kanban board, too.

    I've also found that Todoist is better at understanding natural language settings for projects, times, and so on than a lot of other to-do apps, so, for example, I can type "Edit next article at 2 pm on Tuesday #ArsTechnica" to add a to-do within the Ars Technica project with a due time of 2 pm on the following Tuesday. A lot of to-do apps support that, but I feel Todoist does it best.

    Read 52 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      Thanks to subscriptions, iPhone apps finally made more money than games

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 15 July, 2022 - 20:29

    Screenshot of App Store icon.

    Enlarge / Apple's App Store. (credit: Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images )

    Throughout the short history of smartphone apps, games have consistently driven more revenue than non-gaming app categories. But that has finally changed in the United States, according to new data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

    The shift began in May 2022. By June, 50.3 percent of US consumer spending on apps was on non-game apps like TikTok, Netflix, and Tinder. Spending on non-game apps has recently grown at twice the rate as spending on games. Game spending was exploding at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 and early 2020, but by late 2020, non-gaming apps caught up, and they surpassed games in 2021.

    This has been driven in part by the shift so many apps have made to a subscription-based model of late. For years, games generated more revenue not necessarily because they got more downloads (though they often did) but because their long-term monetization was clearer, more consistent, and more robust thanks to in-app transactions. Other types of apps didn't have that going for them, and many were sold for one-time purchase prices or offered a limited number of premium upgrades.

    Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments