IOS APP Store Data Report: Game Makers With an Annual Revenue of Less Than $1 Million Contribute to Only 2% of the Total Revenue

In 2018, this kind of game makers totaled $955.4 million in annual revenue, accounting for 3% of the total of game APPs. This figure has dropped to $878 million in 2019—2.3% of the total.

It is also worth noting that the proportion of developers with less than $1 million annual revenue has been decreasing each year. In 2018, more than 98% of game makers had less than $1 million revenue; by 2019, that proportion has shrunk to 97.3%; and according to the data since early 2020, the figure has fallen to 96.7%.

Non-game Developers Analysis

As for non-game developers, Sensor Tower’s data shows that about 98.4% of them have a total revenue of less than one million dollars in 2020, taking up 10.2% of their subscribers’ spending. Same with game makers, the proportion of non-game developers with less than $1 million annual revenue has been declining each year— 11% in 2019 and about 14% in 2018.

If an overall analysis is conducted to the 112,000 game makers that make profits on APP Store in 2020, those with less than $1 million revenue in 2020 take up 97.5 %, accounting for only 4.8% of APP Store’s total, which amount to $59.3 billion from January to October this year. In 2019, they accounted for 5% of the total revenue, compared to 6.2% in 2018.

Can the Discount in Commission Make a Difference?

In general, Apple’s decision to reduce the percentage of small developers’ dividends to 15% is a significant shift from its previous policy. Although this has little impact on its profit base, it is enough to make waves in the market, and will make other platforms to follow suit.

However, the majority of revenue of APP Store still come from developers with more than $1 million annual revenue, and this is even more obvious for gaming APPs. Apple’s commission strategy remains unchanged for these top ones. So, only time will tell if this change will gradually change the entire ecosystem of APP Store or not.