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Mobile commerce at Google Play growing faster than Apple App Store

Julie Campbell | August 16, 2013

According to a recent report, apps for Android have greater traction than those for iOS.

App store analytics firm, Distimo, has just released a monthly global apps report that has provided insight into the mobile commerce growth rates that have been experienced by the industry giants throughout the length of July 2013.

This includes an overview of the Apple App Store and Google Play total revenues in the first half of the year.

The Distimo report also examined the relative mobile commerce market sizes in each of the countries that it included in its analysis. What it determined was that over the first six months of 2013, both Google Play and the Apple App Store have seen considerable increases in their total revenues. The Apple App store saw a considerably smaller amount of growth at 15 percent than the massive increases that were experienced by Google Play, at 67 percent.

At the same time, the mobile commerce earnings from Apple were greater than those at Google.

In fact, as much as Google Play may be experiencing faster mobile commerce growth than the Apple App Store, Apple’s revenue generation was twice as large as that of its main competitor.

Among all of the mobile commerce markets analyzed in July within this study, it was the United States that was found to have spent the largest amount of money on apps. This was followed by Japan, in second place, and the South Korea, in third place. Those were also the countries that contributed the most to the growth of the revenue at Google Play.

Among all of the apps that were sold in the two primary mobile commerce stores in July 2013, the apps that saw the best performance when it came to free downloads, paid downloads, as well as those that experienced the largest amount of global aggregate revenue, were each identified within the study. It also went on to identify the leading publishers for that month within each of those various categories. The report also went on to provide greater detail regarding the leading new apps based on their exceptional performance.

Social media marketing expectations are changing

Julie Campbell | August 14, 2013

According to the latest research, there is a maturing occurring in what people expect from this technique.

There is nothing rare about research being conducted on the results that are being generated by social media marketing, but what is starting to become quite interesting in this domain is the change in the expectations surrounding the results that the technique will generate.

Now that the channel has been used for a few years, it is becoming possible to view its trends.

Some patterns have started to emerge as the very latest in studies have been released by the researchers at the Pivot Conference, and their publication, the “State of Social Media Marketing 2012-2013”. Though the research did provide a large amount of detail as to the breakdown of the use of the strategy over the last few years, it is the trends that are being viewed as the most worthwhile.

For example, many of the respondents in this study changed their feeling that social media marketing success must be gauged by sales.

Social media marketing changes In 2011, the respondents stated in 100 percent of the cases that an increase in sales was the top goal for any campaign using social media marketing, either for their own company, or those of their clients. However, that opinion has changed dramatically since that time, as in 2012, it was recorded that less than 50 percent of the participants felt the same way. This year, it appears to be climbing again, and is currently settled at the 56 percent mark.

The data from the study also showed that there were tremendously high expectations of the performance of social media marketing in 2011 and a withdrawal of that belief in 2012. This year, there seems to be a rebound in the faith that marketers have in the technique. This occurred in nearly every response area of the study.

Many are interpreting this as a sign that social media marketing as a technique is now maturing, and that the understanding and expectations surrounding it are starting to become more realistic and steady. It has moved beyond the tremendous hype and has survived disappointment and is now starting to level off to a degree that is often seen in areas that are more established.