Here’s What It Takes for an App to Beat the Rest and Top the App Store Charts
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Have you ever wondered just how popular an app or game has to be to make it onto one of the App Store’s Top Ten lists? A new analysis is giving us a peek into exactly what it takes to reach the heights of App Store popularity — and not surprisingly it’s harder than it used to be.
According to Sensor Tower, which routinely analyzes the App Store and Google Play marketplaces, a non-game app has to be downloaded 156,000 times on a given day to reach the number one spot in the U.S. App Store. That’s a 37 percent increase from what was required three years ago when the median was only 114,000 daily downloads.
Interestingly, that bar has dropped for mobile games, which now only need 93,000 installs in a single day, down 46 percent from the 171,000 required for top placement in 2019.
This difference would seem to result from the explosive growth in non-game apps during the global health pandemic. In 2020, the market “grew more saturated” for these kinds of apps, reaching a peak threshold of 185,000 downloads per day needed to hit the top spot.
The App Store’s high water mark has since declined from there, but it’s still ahead of where it was in 2019 and well ahead of the situation on the Google Play store, where it’s dropped by 33 percent over the past three years.
Sensor Tower attributes some of this to Apple’s rollout of App Tracking Transparency, which has forced developers to change their tactics a bit in how they acquire users. It could also simply result from things settling down after “the boom in adoption during COVID-19.”
Topping the Charts is Easier for Games
One fascinating tidbit highlighted by Sensor Tower’s report is that games don’t need nearly as many downloads to reach number one as non-game apps. This is true on both the App Store and Google Play.
Historically low installs are needed for both iPhone and Android mobile games to rank among the top 10 in the U.S. so far in 2022. On the App Store, a title must reach 26,000 downloads, down 40 percent from 43,000 in 2019; comparing the same two periods, a title must obtain 16,000 on Google Play, 52 percent less than 33,000.
With the proliferation of higher-quality cross-platform games, it’s likely that many folks are simply searching out the specific games they’re interested in rather than looking for new titles to try out. This results in fewer titles competing for the top spot.
Toughest Categories
While non-game apps still have it harder overall, it’s very difficult for an app in the entertainment category to even break the top ten. An iPhone entertainment app needs at least 25,000 installs to get on the charts at all. Other similarly challenging categories include Shopping, Social Networking, Travel, and Finance.
These categories are all dominated by a plethora of well-known apps. For instance, Entertainment’s top ten regularly includes things like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and TikTok, while shopping is filled with the likes of Amazon, Costco, and Walmart.
Internationally, China is the most difficult country to get into the top ten this year, requiring 108,000 downloads a day so far in 2022, which is more than double the year-to-date number in the U.S. However, both countries are pretty close when it comes to the threshold for games.
The large swath of incumbents makes it pretty hard for new developers to get their apps noticed, which is why so many have to resort to marketing their apps outside of the App Store.
