Have you ever been concerned about the amount of time you spend scrolling on your phone?
Because I sure have.
Phone-checking habits are often quoted alongside app statistics, but they measure something different from app use.
How to avoid checking on your phone when both stores add new apps constantly, many of them free? And many people like being early adopters.
We have prepared plenty of fresh app usage statistics to guide you through this captivating topic. This information is quite important when considering billions of app downloads, time spent on them, and revenue levels in the app industry.
Now, before we dive into these exciting stats, here’s a sneak peek of some of the most fascinating ones:
Insightful App Usage Stats (Editor’s Choice):
- Users spend nearly 90% of their smartphone time using apps.
- Downloads across iOS and Google Play reached nearly 150 billion in 2025, up just 0.8% year over year.
- Consumers spent 5.3 trillion hours in iOS and Google Play apps in 2025, about 3.6 hours a day per mobile user.
- WhatsApp reached 3 billion monthly users in 2025.
- The age group that uses mobile apps the most is 18–24, with 112.6 hours of monthly usage.
- Most consumers have many apps installed on their smartphones, but, for the most part, they use only 45% of them.
- In 2025, downloads grew 0.8%, time spent 3.8% and in-app purchase revenue 10.6%: the market is monetising more, not installing more.
- Non-game apps overtook games in in-app purchase revenue for the first time in 2025.
Apps Market Share
We’re starting with some quality info you might not be aware of.
Two giants dominate the app scene, and more apps are now available than ever.
Fasten your seatbelts!
1. In the US, users spend a whopping 90% of their total smartphone time on apps.
(Source: eMarketer)
People reserve nearly 90% of their time on their smartphones for apps. The remaining 10% or so go on web browsers. In the battle of mobile apps vs. mobile websites, statistics show the obvious winner. And they are even more telling when you consider mobile traffic is actually ahead of desktop browsing.
In 2018, clients spent 2h 49min on apps and only 25 minutes on web browsing on average. While in 2020, these numbers are 3h 35min for apps and 25 minutes for browsers. From 2018 to 2020, web browsing time remains more or less the same, while app time continues to grow. The forecast for 2021 and 2022 assumes continuous growth.
Those are US figures from 2018 and 2020, and they measure app time as a share of smartphone time. A separate measure of scale: Sensor Tower estimates that consumers spent 5.3 trillion hours in iOS and Google Play apps during 2025, up 3.8% year over year, or roughly 3.6 hours a day per mobile user. That is time in apps, not apps’ share of phone use.
These differences are no surprise when you consider the number of available apps. Have you ever wondered how many mobile apps there are?
2. Google Play listed about 1.8 million apps in April 2025.
(Source: Appfigures, via The Verge)
Appfigures counted about 1.8 million Google Play apps in April 2025, down from 3.4 million at the start of 2024 after a large quality and safety cleanup. That fall reflects removals rather than a collapse in developer activity, and it is a dated third-party snapshot rather than a live store count.
In March 2018, the number of available apps reached 3.6 million.
And all of this is quite spectacular when we consider that in 2009, Google offered only 16 thousand apps. What an increase in 11 years!
These stats are continuously varying since both Google Play and Apple App Store are constantly improving their offers.
For insights on how many apps are on the App Store iOS, scroll down to the upcoming stat.
3. Apple reported 2,172,472 apps on the App Store in 2025.
(Source: Apple)
Apple’s 2025 transparency report puts the App Store at 2,172,472 apps.
These numbers fluctuate because of the regular updating from both stores. Nevertheless, the number of apps is snowballing in both Google and Apple stores.
Adding the two stores together would double count: the same app is often published on both, and the two stores count listings differently.
All these apps are divided into categories. Check out which app categories are present on App and Google Play Store because, let’s face it, you’re probably using some of them.
4. Apple App Store offers nearly 250,000 gaming apps.
(Source: 42matters)
Apple App Store formed 27 categories of apps. The top category is games, followed by business and education.
A quick look at the smartphone app statistics reveals that out of all these gaming apps, 228,069 are free, and only 19,665 are paid. These numbers are rapidly changing.
It’s a little surprising that social networking apps take on the low 15th place in this division. But the reason can be the fact that most people only use a few social media apps. Games, i.e., are released more often than any other category.
Now that we’ve investigated Apple, let’s take a look at Google Play Store.
5. Google Play Store offers over 336,000 educational apps.
(Source: 42matters)
Google Play Store has a similar number of app categories as the Apple App store, 49 to be exact. Apps market share differs somewhat between these two.
Contrary to Apple, Google’s biggest category is education, business in second place, and music & audio in third.
Precisely 321,223 educational apps on Google Play Store are free, while only 15,426 are paid.
Social apps are also low-ranked, just like at the iOS App Store—they take 16th place for the same reasons.
Who are these people working so hard on developing so many apps, and how much money do they make?
6. Apple reviewed 9.1 million app submissions and removed 166,899 apps in 2025.
(Source: Apple)
Apple’s transparency report records 9,100,620 app submissions reviewed, 2,093,244 submissions rejected and 166,899 apps removed from the App Store during 2025. Submissions can be reviewed more than once, so the review total is not a count of unique apps submitted.
7. Apple reported 60.6 million registered developers and 892.7 million weekly App Store visitors.
(Source: Apple)
Apple’s 2025 transparency report lists 60,597,750 registered developers and an average of 892,670,823 weekly App Store visitors. In January 2026, Apple said developers selling digital goods and services had earned more than $550 billion through the App Store since 2008. That is a cumulative total since launch, not annual revenue.
Besides this, Tim Cook stated how Apple’s programming language Swift, is reaching its peak. Developers are writing thousands of apps available in the App Store in Swift—more than 350,000 apps in 2018.
While on the topic of money, let’s see what else info can app revenue statistics offer.
8. In-app purchases and paid apps generated $167 billion in 2025.
(Source: Sensor Tower)
Sensor Tower puts in-app purchase and paid app and game revenue across iOS and Google Play at $167 billion in 2025, up 10.6% year over year. That figure covers money paid inside the stores only: it excludes advertising revenue and commerce transacted through apps, so it is not a measure of the whole app economy. For historical comparison, total mobile app income was put at $365.2 billion in 2018 under a broader definition.
As the numbers above show, spending inside apps keeps climbing even as download growth flattens. So, find out more about mobile app usage in the following section.
App Usage Statistics
People are downloading apps all the time, and the number of downloads is continually increasing.
Many mobile app categories are popular worldwide, but some are more used than others.
These insights will satisfy your curiosity and answer some of the frequently asked questions.
9. Downloads across both stores reached nearly 150 billion in 2025.
(Source: Sensor Tower)
Global downloads across iOS and Google Play reached nearly 150 billion in full-year 2025, up 0.8% year over year, according to Sensor Tower. Install growth is now close to flat even though time spent and spending both hit records, which is what a mature market looks like.
But there’s more to it.
10. Non-game apps overtook games in in-app purchase revenue for the first time.
(Source: Sensor Tower)
In 2025, non-game apps passed games in in-app purchase revenue for the first time. Non-game IAP revenue rose 21% year over year while games grew 1.3%, according to Sensor Tower. Subscriptions across streaming, productivity, dating and health apps did most of that work. Note the measure: this is in-app purchase revenue, not total company revenue and not advertising.
11. Social, gaming, and communication are the top three app categories for approximately 58% of clients.
(Source: Simform)
Out of all these downloads, some categories of apps are more popular than others.
In Simform's historical study, 58% of respondents named social, gaming and communication as their three most-used categories. Its chart reports 131 minutes per week for social apps and 116 for gaming. Productivity, health and wellness, travel and maps together account for 106 minutes per week. Two things to keep straight: the 58% is a share of respondents, not a share of app time, and these are weekly figures from a historical study rather than 2026 population averages.
But these are just categories, and you probably want to know which particular apps are the most popular ones.
12. WhatsApp reached 3 billion monthly users in 2025.
(Source: Meta)
Clients communicate via messaging apps, mostly because of the low costs. The COVID-19 world pandemic has shown the importance of getting in touch with your closest friends and family.
Meta reported that WhatsApp reached 3 billion monthly users in 2025, making it the most used messaging app in the world.
But you may wonder, which app led downloads back then?
13. TikTok was the number one downloaded non-gaming app in 2021.
(Source: Sensor Tower)
TikTok is a social media platform used for creating short videos. In 2020 and 2021 it led non-game downloads, and it had passed two billion cumulative downloads over Google Play and iOS App Store.
So many downloads indicate a high level of app revenue. TikTok’s earnings increased to $456.7 million.
This app outpaced other apps at the very beginning of the year, in the first quarter, with 315+ million downloads.
14. Generative AI apps drew 3.8 billion downloads in 2025.
(Source: Sensor Tower)
Sensor Tower estimates 3.8 billion downloads, more than $5 billion in in-app purchases and 48 billion hours of use across generative AI apps in 2025. That is a category total rather than any single app’s numbers, and generative AI is one notable growth category rather than the fastest-growing category on every measure.
Mobile App Usage Demographics
Okay, we went through some stats about popular apps, but there are other important questions.
Who uses these apps, where in the world, and how many apps do people have on average?
This is just some of the info you will find below.
15. Clients from 18 to 24 years use their mobile apps for 112.6 hours per month.
(Source: Simform)
The most represented group in this division is the 18–24 age group, who use apps on their smartphones for about 3 hours 45 minutes daily. Coincidentally, these are the people that spend the most on the internet.
Mobile app usage by age amounts to around 1 hour 43 minutes daily for the age group 65+.
This is a worldwide division, so it’s also interesting to know where all those people come from.
16. The number of app downloads in India exceeds 5 billion.
(Source: AppTweak)
In the first half of 2019, India was the top country per the number of app downloads. It recorded more than 5 billion downloads, both from Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
The US and Brazil follow India, with more than 3,3 billion and nearly 2 billion app downloads, respectively. These were the leading download markets in the first half of 2019. The comparison covers the mobile app market size in 2020.
While 63% of clients download from the App Store in the US, 37% download from Google Play.
After calculating the number of app downloads for the top 10 countries, the conclusion is that around 74% of app downloads come from Google Play Store.
Considering billions of downloads, we can only imagine how many apps an average person installs. Luckily, we don’t have to imagine because here’s one other stat:
17. People keep about 40 apps but spend 89% of their app time in 18 of them.
(Source: Simform)
Simform's historical study reports that people have about 40 apps installed and spend 89% of their app time across 18 of them. For millennials it reports more than 67 installed apps and 25 that are commonly used. These are reported findings from that study rather than representative 2026 population averages.
18. More than 15% of both men and women use Facebook the most in the US.
(Source: Statista)
Among dozens of apps on persons’ smartphones, app usage stats indicate that you will probably find Facebook on them, considering its global popularity.
A significant 18% of women choose Facebook as their favorite app, and 15% of men share their opinion.
Besides Facebook, among the first three most popular apps for both genders is Instagram. According to Statista, 16% of women, and 10% of men, wouldn’t know what to do without this app.
These stats show the current mobile app state, but here are some expectations for mobile apps’ future.
19. The Covid pandemic greatly shifted the types of apps being used in 2020 and 2021.
(Source: Statista)
The restriction of in-person events and activities had a noticeable impact on the types of apps people use. Unsurprisingly the usage of travel-focused and sports apps went down. People didn’t have anywhere to go, and a lot of sporting events were canceled.
Just as unsurprising was the increase in usage of media apps, retail apps, and gaming. The apps that saw the biggest increase in use were medical, health, and wellness. The usage of these increased by 60% during the pandemic.
Wrap Up
Wow, this was an enormous amount of information, that’s for sure. Even more stats and facts are available out there, and they’re being updated regularly. After you’ve read so many app usage stats, can you believe that each time you take a few deep breaths, someone somewhere in the world opens an app?
We can learn from all of this that the app market will continue to grow by the year. The number of available apps is mind-blowing, and it has a promising future. Why is that?
Every time you need to buy something, pay bills, send money, or just scroll through some pictures on Instagram, you’ll most probably use an app.
All over the world, both men and women use the perks of apps and the various features they offer. The world as we know it just wouldn’t be the same without these useful little helpers, and thankfully, there are plenty of app usage statistics to look back to when in doubt.
