A recent study has revealed that US iPhone users are making more in-app purchases, the average person shelling out $40 on apps in 2016.
As part of its “Data That Drives App Growth” research, Sensor Tower Store Intelligence looks at the five app categories that receive the most revenue from in-app purchases, and how often people are downloading new products.
The research found that the average iPhone user in the US spent $5 more in apps last year compared to 2015 – the figure rising from $35 to $40 per device.
Games took the most money, users spending an average of $27 on the category last year, up from $25 in 2015.
Interestingly, the entertainment category saw the largest growth over the past 12 months, spending up 130%, hitting $2.30.
Social media and dating apps like Tinder saw spending rise from $1.80 in 2015 to $2.00 a year later, with spending in photo & video-based apps growing from $0.30 to $0.70.
Despite solid spending gains, Sensor Tower did find that iPhone users are downloading new apps less.
In 2015, people downloaded an average of 35 apps from the App Store, a figure that dropped to 33 in 2016.
Although this may not seem like a lot, per category the number of app installs has seen significant decline.
For example, iPhone users downloaded 2.3 social networking platforms in 2016, down from 3.3 in 2015, which translates to one less app per device.
Games were also found to have received an average of 9.9 downloads in 2016, compared to 10.5 the year before.
Sensor Tower said: “This device-level data adds weight to a greater theme we’ve been tracking, where downloads for certain categories, such as Social Networking, continue to coalesce around the most dominant apps (in this case Facebook, Messenger, Snapchat, etc.).
“It’s still possible for new apps to find success in these categories, but the data shows that, more and more often, users are being drawn to the most well-established apps when deciding what to install on their devices.
“However, it’s not yet to the extent of revenue, where we’ve already shown that 1 percent of monetising publishers are responsible for more than 94 percent of in-app spending on the App Store.”
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