The iOS App Store launched in 2008 with 500 apps. Today, there are over four million apps available across iOS and Android platforms, extending to a wide range of sub-genres and niches.
These apps have come to play a huge role in the way we live our lives today. Through them, we can access the entire Western canon of music (and much beyond it too), meet romantic partners, manage our diaries and pay people without cash or card.
The market for these apps is about as big as they come. It is estimated that there are over six billion smartphone users worldwide, and about five billion of those have access to the internet. Some of the most popular apps in the world, such as Facebook and YouTube, have more users than China and India have people.
These devices are approaching ubiquity in advanced economies, among which median penetration levels stand at 78% of adults. In South Korea, 95% of adults own a smartphone.
Emerging economies are catching up. Brazil and South Africa already log penetration levels of 70%, and India is adding hundreds of millions of users every year. It is expected that in the next five years many of these markets will reach similar maturity levels to Europe and North America.
In 2018, more than 100 billion apps were downloaded for the first time. This shot up to over 140 million in 2020 with the pandemic, and has continued to grow since.
We have collected data and statistics on iOS and Android app downloads. Read on below to find out more. Want an overview of the entire app economy? Check out our App Data report.
App Download Key Statistics
- 142.2 billion apps and games were downloaded in 2025, a 3.1% increase on the previous year
- 96.9 billion of those downloads were for apps, and 45.3 billion were for games
- Google Play was responsible for 104.6 billion downloads in 2025, accounting for 73.5% of total downloads
- iOS was responsible for the other 26.5% of downloads, which totalled 36.6 billion
- Indian mobile users downloaded the most apps, followed by the United States and Brazil
- Saudi Arabia downloaded the most apps by capita, followed by Iraq and Turkey
- India also spent the most hours on apps, but Egypt was the top country on hours spent by capita
Want to learn all about the app industry? Our App Data Report covers revenues, downloads, and number of apps across both app stores, alongside most popular and top grossing apps of the year.
App Data Report 2026
App and Game Downloads
The number of apps downloaded annually increased by 3.1%, reversing a three year decline. Apps accounted for 68% of total downloads.
