Apps, apps, apps: Who’s winning and what’s working on Google Play and iOS

Snapchat continued its improbable rise to the top of the iOS app store in April, proving there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Even with controversial content and security concerns, iPhone users continued to download the app in record numbers.

App Annie released its May apps index this morning– all apps minus games — and the giants are doing well: Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Facebook are well-represented on the top publisher lists. But there are also some surprises, and some new entrants to the most-downloaded and highest-grossing app leader lists on iOS and Google Play.

App Annie, along with many of the biggest and most dynamic apps, including Facebook to Google, will be at our MobileBeat event in two weeks. Buy tickets here.

Here’s all the key data:

Top publishers by downloads

Interestingly, some companies are much more efficient with their apps, claiming top spots with just a few. Facebook, for instance, takes third place on the iOS app store and first on Google Play with just five apps, while Tencent needs 114 to take fourth on iOS, and GO Launcher requires a massive 371 apps to take fourth on Google Play.

In addition, while the iOS app store is led by U.S. publishers (seven out of the top 10), Google Play is split evenly between the U.S. and other nations — five out of 10 are American publishers.

Top apps by downloads

For top apps, it’s astonishing to see how intense a battle is shaping on on Google Play for communication and chat apps — and how dominated that platform is by those apps. Five of the top 10 Google Play apps are chatting and messaging apps: WhatsApp Messenger, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Viber, and WeChat.

And that’s not counting Facebook itself, Twitter, and Instagram, all of which have communication aspects.

iOS, of course, has Snapchat at number one, up from the second spot in March, but it otherwise shows more diversity of genre, with Moldiv, an oddly named-but-superpopular photo collage app appearing out of nowhere to hit the top 10 list. (It was not even in the top 1,000 last month.)

Top publishers by revenue

Pandora continues to do astonishingly well, retaining its top spot on iOS, while moving up a slot on Google Play. And Japanese social/entertainment apps Line and Gree continue to monetize extremely well. June Fabrics Technology is a little-known publisher that makes an app that tethers your Android tablet to your Android phone to share its Internet access, and it has been amazingly successful monetizing that feature.

Perhaps most impressive, however, is the continued success of comiXology, which moved up two slots on Google Play this month and retained its slot as the sixth-highest-grossing app on iOS as well.

Top apps by revenue

Asian publishers continued to do very well on Google Play, especially Line and Gree. Line’s new fortune-telling app made an improbably leap from #104 to the eighth-place position.

Apple’s Page’s app moved up two slots to hit number six on the iOS app revenue leader list, while Major League Baseball’s At Bat app slipped five slots. Skype jumped 10 positions to hit the top ten list.

Image credits: MKH Marketing/Flickr