Sales on the Google Play Store Increase by 84% in 2016

When it comes to apps, Google leads in terms of overall downloads while Apple leads in terms of overall revenue. This hasn’t changed over the years despite ups and downs in both of the companies.

The situation hasn’t changed much but the Mountain View-based Google is making progress on the revenue front with sales increasing by 84% year on year in Q4 2016 from Q4 2015.

Here’s the net revenue of Apple’s iTunes App Store and Google’s Play Store compared year on year.

The last quarter of 2016 saw astonishing sales growth of 84 percent compared to the same quarter of 2015. The total revenue rose from $1.8 billion to $3.3 billion, which is still short compared to Apple’s $5.4 billion in revenue (up from $3.4 billion last year) but respectable in its own right. As a result, the overall market grew by 67 percent.

The report, courtesy of Sensor Tower, also lists its top apps of the year, both in terms of revenue and downloads.

Overall, the app with the most revenue in the App Store was Netflix, followed by the overall highest and Google Play charts-topper, Line. Streaming services such as HBO, Spotify and Pandora were common across the board.

Among the top downloaded apps for the year were more common names including social networks such as Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, which dominated the charts across the two major platforms.

On Android’s top-charts, utility apps such as Clean Master and SB LED Flashlight made an appearance, which wasn’t the case on the Apple side.

Sensor Tower also doesn’t count pre-installed apps in its survey, which is why none of Apple or Google’s in-built software makes an appearance, obviously.