Global app spending grew 35% to hit $407M on Christmas: Report

Between the two platforms, Apple's App Store captured the bulk of the spending at $278.6 million, while Google Play saw $129 million in revenue, said the report.

San Francisco: Consumers around the globe spent an estimated $407.6 million across Apple’s App Store and Google Play on Christmas, a year-over-year growth of nearly 35 per cent per cent from approximately $303 million in 2019, according to a new report by data analytics firm Sensor Tower.

Between the two platforms, Apple’s App Store captured the bulk of the spending at $278.6 million, while Google Play saw $129 million in revenue, said the report.

This is in line with the massive growth in worldwide spending on mobile apps and games in 2020 which passed $100 billion in a single year for the first time ever in November.

The majority of the holiday spending was on mobile games, which climbed 27 per cent from $232.4 million on Christmas 2019 to $295.6 million this year, said the report.

Tencent’s Honor of Kings was the category leader with approximately $10.7 million in consumer spending, up 205.7 per cent year-over-year from $3.5 million on the same day in 2019.

Consumers spent $112 million on non-game apps this Christmas, up 59 per cent from $70.5 million in the previous year, Stephanie Chan, Mobile Insights Strategist at Sensor Tower, wrote in a blog post.

Compared to last Christmas, non-game apps saw 4.2 percentage points more total spending.

The category that generated the most revenue outside of games on both Apple’s App Store and Google’s platform was entertainment.

While on the App Store, entertainment apps reached $19.3 million, on Google Play, the category generated $4.3 million.

Outside of mobile games, TikTok was the top app in terms of consumer spending, generating $4.7 million globally in revenue on Christmas, Sensor Tower said.