Most profitable app categories for 2020
Today, there’s an app for almost everything – whether you want to order food, find a soulmate, watch a movie and so on, everything is at your fingertips! All you have to do is to download the relevant app.
Apps are best used to serve customers needs. At the same time, developers make millions of dollars through the apps. However, not every app becomes a profitable one. Profitable apps please customers and turn them into long term users.
So, if you want to create a profitable app, you have to know which are the most profitable app categories.
1. Games keep killing it
In the last few years, mobile games have become more popular than XBOX and PlayStation games – everyone owns a mobile phone and can take it with them wherever they go. Mobile games are responsible for 42% of the $110 billion global gaming industry. It is estimated that every fourth application in the App Store and Google Play Store is a game. The mobile gaming industry has attracted over 2.8 billion users around the world, and this number keeps growing!
Users spend more money on games than on any other non-gaming app category. That is hardly surprising. Smartphones are incredibly powerful, and mobile games are polished and visually beautiful. Furthermore, many of the games are also available in a multiplayer mode, which creates an environment for better user engagement.
2. Streaming music and video brings streams of cash…at a high cost
In the non-gaming sector, streaming apps are the most profitable ones. According to a SensorTower report, mobile users spent $1.27 billion on top 10 subscription video-on-demand apps only in the USA, this is a 62% growth from last year.
The subscription-based model is a gold mine for developers. However, creating a service for which people want to par regularly is a rare skill. And even though the income per user is not be large, a consistent revenue stream makes all the difference – little drops of water make a mighty ocean.
Regular payments are favoured over unpredictable, one-off purchases. This monetisation model is most beneficial for app categories that offer dynamic content – movies, videos, music, etc.
3. The promise of finding that special someone…dating apps are on the rise. How do you date and social distance at the same time anyway?!?
Dating apps are another very profitable app category. For example, Tinder is right behind the world-leader Netflix in terms of revenues, which is astonishing, considering that Tinder only has about 100-200 employees. Compared to Netflix with nearly 5000.
Tinder is a free-to-use app with in-app purchases. You can have a plus subscription, which costs $9.99 a month, or Tinder Gold which costs $14.99 a month. This strategy works amazingly well – according to statistics with almost $238 million user spending, Tinder occupies the top position on the world app arena for Q2 2019.
The app dominates both worldwide and the US 2019 dating app rankings, bringing more than 59% of the top 10 dating apps earnings.
4. Keeping up with friends and family
The social networks and messengers are the most downloaded apps in 2019 and the all-time list. And this is not surprising – most of the people have an account on different social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. These social media networks offer instant messaging options to make communication and information sharing extremely easy. Messenger even has become the 2nd most popular app of all time, accounting around 1.3 billion users each month.
5. Staying fit
Meditation and fitness apps are gaining more and more popularity. That might be because people are becoming more aware of the importance of their physical and mental health and want to track their progress.
Health and fitness apps include:
- Self-help apps
- Calorie and diet trackers
- Meditation coaches and audio guides
- Workouts plans and trackers
Fitness and health apps can serve as social networks, which increases engagement. Furthermore, these apps are compatible with various activity trackers and wearable devices which increases the popularity.
According to SensorTower 2019 report, mobile users spend an estimated $327 million on the top ten health and fitness apps on AppStore and Google Play worldwide.
Conclusion
To sum up, mobile games and streaming apps are the most profitable app categories, but also they take the most development time. It might be hard to develop such an app, especially if you’re new to programming.
However, if you have an app idea but you don’t have any programming skills, we’d love to help you bring your idea to life. Here are some tips ?
How to start my own successful app?
- The most successful apps take a lot of time and dedication. These are much easier to find if you actually LIKE what you’re doing.
- If you only focus on making money, you will most probably fail or be miserable. Just like with any other business, apps are about bringing value to their users. The ones which do it the best, are very likely to make the most money.
- Going to get a degree in computer science is a great idea. However, you don’t necessarily need all the skills of a software engineer to start building your app. So, learn the basics and start coding.
- And after you’ve found your great idea and have gathered the skills to actually start working on it, remember the following: Think Big ? Start Small ? Scale
