By Stephen Schenck | December 5, 2012 3:39 PM
When it comes to smartphone apps, who’s on top? A recent study just took a look at sales through Apple’s iOS App Store and Google Play for Android, and paints a picture of only a handful of companies dominating app sales, and nearly all of that income is coming from games.
Canalys conducted its analysis by means of surveys over the course of twenty days, and what it found suggests that just over two dozen developers are responsible for a full half of app sales. These are companies like Zynga and Electronic Arts, and they’re making all that money selling games, not productivity apps.
That may seem a little odd, since while you’ll see GPS navigation apps go for $50 and up, games rarely break the $10 mark. On the flip side, you’re a heck of a lot more likely to have a whole bunch of $5 games on your phone than you would $50 apps, and the volume we’re looking at wins out over high prices.
Of the 25 top-earning devs, only Pandora is making its money from non-game sales. We’d be curious to see if that breakdown changes much as we move into the next 25 most profitable developers, but so far that data hasn’t been made available.
