India, China and the US have the highest competition for apps to rank in the top ten across Apple and Google app stores, according to a report by Sensor Tower.
The report further said these three countries have the highest barriers to entry in the top ten apps.
India has the highest barriers on Android, with non-game apps requiring 2,92,000 median daily installs and mobile games requiring 1,25,000 median daily installs on average to rank in the top ten.
In China, a non-game iPhone app requires around 1,08,000 downloads in a day to rank among the top ten, over twice the amount needed by an iPhone app in the US.
However, it is more difficult for mobile games to rank in the top ten in the US. Mobile games required approximately 26,000 daily installs to make the list.
Overall, a non-game iPhone app now requires approximately 1,56,000 median daily downloads to make it to the United States, up 37 per cent from the median of 1,14,000 daily downloads required throughout 2019.
“As mobile devices became even more of a central fixture in consumers’ lives during 2020, the market grew more saturated for non-game apps,” Sensor Tower said in a post.
Further, iPhone apps required more installs to make it to the top ten than they did before 2019.
“This is a unique challenge for non-game apps on Apple’s marketplace,” it said.
“This could potentially be explained by iOS-specific user acquisition tactics employed by developers after the rollout of App Tracking Transparency (ATT) on the platform. Publishers might also be trying to offset the normalisation of the market after the boom in adoption during Covid-19,” it further added.
A chart-topping mobile game in the US must garner approximately 93,000 installs in one day, compared to 1,71,000 in 2019.