China helps iOS maintain commanding revenue lead over surging Google Play

We’ve done this boogie before: Google Play is absolutely demolishing iOS’s App Store when it comes to sheer download numbers, but iOS is still making way more money.

And Google Play really is surging. That Android app market had 85 percent more app downloads (both games and other apps) than iOS in the second quarter of the year, according to industry-tracking firm App Annie. That’s up from the 70 percent lead Google Play had in Q1 2015. This was once again due to emerging markets like Brazil, India, and Vietnam adopting Android handsets.

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“However, it is worth noting that smartphone penetration remains below 30 percent in many of these countries,” reads the App Annie report. “[This leaves] significant room for growth. This bodes well for Google’s Play’s longterm growth prospects.”

But Apple is still the dominant money-maker in the $30 billion mobile gaming market. It generated 70 percent more revenue than Google Play. This is primarily because, unlike the iOS App Store, the official Android market isn’t in China. That massive Asian country has actually already moved ahead of the United States in terms of iOS downloads, and those consumers are spending money.

“We expected China’s explosive download performance in Q1 2015 to lay the foundation for future revenue growth, and that prediction seems to be holding true,” reads the report. “iOS developers are reaping the benefits already, as China saw the biggest quarterly sequential gain in revenue share in Q2 2015.”

But Google is still well positioned for the future. In addition to the aforementioned nations like Brazil, the Play store is extremely popular in places like Taiwan. And that is a right-place-at-the-right-time situation for Google, which is reaping the rewards from a market that is ballooning at a rapid rate. It is a country that is especially aggressive when it comes to spending on games.

“Even as Germany continues to enjoy stellar year-over-year growth, Taiwan’s performance in Q2 2015 helped it rocket past Germany in Google Play revenue,” reads the report. “Taiwan’s performance in Q2 2015 was almost entirely driven by the Games category.”