With 38 billion downloads, App Store and Google Play had the biggest quarter in history

Even though the new Coronavirus (COVID-19) is devastating several sectors of the economy, some are going through the pandemic unscathed – or even taking advantage of the period of social isolation to obtain record numbers. This is the case with app stores, as brought by Sensor Tower.

According to the company’s latest survey, the App Store it’s the Google Play beat downloads records in the second quarter of 2020: they were nothing less than 37.8 billion apps downloaded in the period, with particular growth in the categories of Business, Cheers and education.

Sensor Tower data on app stores, Q2 2020

Categories that grew and decreased in the second quarter

The big champion of the quarter, of course, was the zoom: despite all the controversies surrounding its security, the videoconferencing app became the third in history to reach 300 million downloads in a quarter – before it, only TikTok and the Pokémon GO game had reached that mark.

Sensor Tower data on app stores, Q2 2020

Most downloaded apps globally on the App Store

The App Store grew 22.6% year-on-year and reached 9.1 billion of downloads, while Google Play jumped 34.9% and registered 28.7 billion downloaded applications. It is worth remembering, however, that the Apple store still overlaps with respect to the competitor when it comes to revenue: as we commented recently, the App Store profited almost twice as much as the Google store in the first half of this year.

Another interesting fact to note in the Sensor Tower report is that, for the first time in six years, United States stayed above China in the total number of downloads registered in the app stores. There were more than 2.2 billion downloads, a clear consequence of the effects of social isolation in the North American country – China, on the other hand, has been restoring normality for a few months.

Will the trend continue in the coming months? Let’s follow.

via iMore