U.S. iPhone users spent 23% more on in-app purchases (IAP) and premium apps in 2017 than the year before, Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data reveals.
The average amount spent per active iPhone increased to an estimated $58 last year, up from $47 in 2016, according to the research group. This spending doesn’t include purchases made in shopping apps such as Amazon or payments to ride sharing apps like Uber.
It does, however, reflect revenue earned by apps including Netflix and Tinder, not to mention the store’s ever-growing number of free-to-play mobile games, which once again represented the lion’s share of consumer expenditure, notes Sensor Tower.
Mobile games represented the single largest category of spending in iPhone apps on the Apple App Store last year in the U.S. accounting for approximately more than half of all money spent. On a per-device level, games contributed about $36 of the $58 spent per device, or 62%, based on Sensor Tower’s analysis. This translated into a 13% increase in per-device spending for the category year-over-year, up from $32 in 2016.
Among the top five largest app categories by U.S. App Store revenue last year, Lifestyle apps posted the most significant year-over-year increase in per-device spending, growing 110% —or more than double 2016—to an average of $2.10 per iPhone. Dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble, which more than doubled their annual revenue from U.S. iPhones last year, were among the top earners in this category.
The Entertainment and Social Networking categories also saw significant growth over the previous year of 57% and 38%, respectively, to $4.40 and $3.60 per device. The Music app category displayed the smallest year-over-year growth among the five highest-earning categories at 8% to $4.10 per device.
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