Active usage data for the top mobile apps is generally under lock and key by the developers. Here at Inside Mobile Apps we post weekly articles that take a look at the top grossing (as well as paid and free) apps charts for iOS and Android. Mobile app developers want to not only see who’s on the list, but know how to get to the top of the list.
Onavo, a company that develops consumer apps that track data usage for users, took a look of their own at the highest-grossing games. The company wanted to see if there was a correlation with the top games successfully generating revenue such as Clash of Clans, Castle Age, and Modern War, and how those titles stack up against each other when user base is factored in.
To accomplish this, the Tel Aviv-based company looked at the usage for the top 25 grossing iPhone games in the U.S. of November 2012. They looked at the market share, in which Onavo said is the percentage of their U.S. iPhone users that use the any of the top 25 games. Onavo also calculated average engagement and the relative value of its users, which is represented by a scoring system based on average revenue per user (ARPU). The chart below takes the percentage of users actively playing a particular game and the rank for each game on the top grossing apps charts, and then Onavo took those numbers to estimate the strength of the ARPU for each title.
Games with the largest market share were Angry Birds Star Wars with 3.9 percent, Subway Surfers with 3.5 percent and Bike Race Free with 3.4 percent, even though none of the titles ranked higher than seven. Onavo found that Applibot’s RPG card battler Legends of Cryptids and Cygames developed Rage of Bahamut have the highest ARPUs despite both having small market shares. Rage of Bahamut has done so well, Japanese mobile-social gaming juggernaut DeNA paid $92 million for a 20 percent share in Cygames and the game has been consistently at the No. 1 spot on the U.S. top grossing Android apps chart for months
Onavo is known for its two free apps, Onavo Extend and Onavo Count, for iOS and Android. Extend allows a user to compress their wireless data, saving the user money while also providing insights into data usage. Count grants the user the ability to see data usage on an individual app basis.
Onavo have single-digit millions of users using their suite of apps, so this allows the company to look into daily mobile traffic for a slew of apps. Also, Onavo’s apps are made for consumers and the company doesn’t work directly with developers. This means Onavo can make active usage for particular apps public without the repercussions of having a developer no longer working with them, which would be the case for mobile analytics companies such as Flurry.