Apple-Commissioned Study Highlights Success of Third-Party Apps

Apple today shared a new App Store study that it commissioned from economists at Analysis Group, with the report highlighting the success of third-party developers on the App Store. As Apple is facing concerns about the prioritization and dominance of its apps on the App Store, as well as regulatory pressure to open up iOS to sideloading and alternate app store options, the study came as a result.

Apple wants to give up facts on the app store and the content that developers are creating for it. The first part of the study focuses on how developers can reach consumers outside of the App Store through other digital marketplaces.

The second part of the study focuses on the growth of the App Store over time, and it shows that Apple has just 60 apps.

Third-party apps are the only option for many categories like social networks, food, travel planning, and dating services, as Apple does not, according to the final part of the study. It also states that Apple's apps areeclipsed in popularity and account for a relatively small share of usage.

The top apps in each category are compared against Apple apps. In the U.S., Apple Music is more popular with Apple users in terms of daily active users and time spent in the app than it is with other users.

According to the study, Apple has a lower share of most app categories. Apple has a 41 percent share in the U.S. because it competes with other communication apps and has a 36 percent share for maps. It has a three percent share in the TV category and an eight percent share in the reading category.

The study takes a deep dive into several app categories where Apple competes, including communication, reading, music streaming, mapping, TV and video streaming, games, health and fitness, and news.

Average listening time per day by users.

Several specific report highlights that it found notable were pulled out by Apple in the newsroom article.

• Third-party apps are the only options for consumers for entire types of apps, including social networking, dating services, travel planning, and food and drink.
• Leaders in app types often vary across countries, with many regional leaders outperforming their globally competitive counterparts.
• Third-party apps are the most popular among ‌iPhone‌ users in most regions for major app types, including music streaming, TV and movie streaming, reading, communication, and mapping apps.
• Across many app types, Apple's own apps account for a relatively small share of app usage among ‌iPhone‌ users. This is the case even though some Apple apps are preinstalled to enable core functionality of the device.
• ‌iPhone‌ users often use multiple apps within a single category, especially apps for communicating, reading the news, watching videos, or navigating -- underscoring how easily users can switch between apps and the breadth of opportunity for developers.

Apple uses a newsroom article to point out the wide range of tools that it makes available to developers, along with the investments that it makes in the next generation of developers, with tools like Everyone Can Code, App Development in Swift, and Swift Playgrounds.

Apple does not intend to give this data to regulators like those developing the Digital Markets Act in Europe, but the company hopes that regulators will notice the data and facts made available.

The data used for the study was derived from Data.Ai, and it looked at metrics like active users, time spent in apps, and total number of downloads. The data was obtained from a third-party measurement tool because Apple has limited data of its own, but the company did say that it is partnering on the study and thus the data was within the realm of what Apple has access to.

The full Analysis Group study on third-party apps can be found on Apple's website.