Google Play Store Statistics (2024)

David Curry

Updated: November 5, 2024

Google Play is the largest app store by number of apps and downloads, accounting for about half of all app downloads in the world. Launched in 2008 as the Android Market, it followed in the footsteps of the Apple App Store, which had launched a few months earlier.

It didn't take Android long to catch up to Apple in terms of raw numbers, with more apps on the Android Market by 2011. In 2012, Google rebranded most of its Android apps to Google Play, and the Google Play Store which we know today was born.

The next five years saw developers publish more than two million more apps and games on the store, reaching a peak in 2017 with 3.6 million apps available. Starting in 2017, Google started to purge older apps that failed to meet the requirements of its newest operating system update. It also tightened rules for developers looking to get their app on Google Play. This led to over one million apps being removed from the store.

On top of improving quality control, Google has also spent the past few years trying to drive more revenue to its publishers. Even though Google Play is far larger in terms of users, the Apple App Store has much higher consumer spending. It has partly succeeded, with consumer spending on Google Play almost doubling since 2018, however it is still far behind Apple.

Even though Android at its core is an open-source project, with any developer or manufacturer able to create their own version of it, Google's proprietary version is the one almost every smartphone uses. As part of the contract manufacturers sign up to when using Google's own Android fork, the Google Play Store and other Google services must be pre-installed.

Alongside Google not allowing third-party app stores to be installed via the web or added to the Google Play Store, it has effectively shut off all competitor app stores. Samsung, HTC, and other manufacturers launched third-party stores in the 2010s, but without the ability to offer them to Android users outside their own customers, developers paid them little interest.

Similar to Apple, Google has faced complaints from major developers and open-source advocates that this closed-system approach is bad for developers and competition. Several big name developers have complained to legislators in the European Union and United States Congress about the inability to compete with Google on Android.

We have collected data and statistics on the Google Play Store. Read on below to find out more.

Key Google Play Statistics

  • Consumers spent $47 billion on Google Play apps and games in 2023
  • Over 113 billion apps and games were downloaded on Google Play last year
  • 2.61 billion apps and games are available to download on Google Play
  • The top grossing app on Google Play in 2023 was Google One, a cloud storage service
  • Instagram was the most downloaded app on Google Play last year, with 521 million downloads