Sony Sony's Fate/Grand Order is the number one game by consumer spending worldwide in 2019 on mobile

[SaysWho?]

 

I don't think Fate/Grand Order is even big in NA, which makes this more impressive to me. The game's a beast in Japan, and I barely know a thing about it.  

 

On another note, g'dang Tinder. O_O

[Keyser_Soze]

Weird that it's associated with Sony.

[Dodger]

I've never even heard of it. 

[XxEvil AshxX]

I wish Tinder was around before I got married. Would've made things so much easier than AOL chat.

[Brian]

PUBG beat Fortnite? Seems suspect 

[Keyser_Soze]

8 minutes ago, ManUtdRedDevils said:

PUBG beat Fortnite? Seems suspect 

 

PUBG Mobile is a lot better than Fortnite mobile, at least when I tried it when they came out.

[TwinIon]

That chart seems more than a little suspicious, especially since they obviously need to extrapolate (or completely guess) the actual spending.

 

Pandora has just over 6 million paid users. Spotify has 113 million. I really don't see how Pandora is the top grossing music app, much less the 6th highest grossing app overall. I know Spotify has made it difficult or impossible to pay through iOS, but I thought that changed and that you could on Android. Even if you can't pay Spotify a dime through the app store, Apple Music still has 10x as many paying subscribers.

 

YouTube being so high up is another red flag. YouTube Premium and Red before it has been a complete failure. The only number I could find on subscribers was 1.5M from 2016 (Spotify had 30M at that point). I suppose people rent movies on there, but I really doubt that's enough to put it at 5. I'm also 100% sure that Google hides all YouTube revenue so much that we have no real idea how much it makes.

 

Also, while it's hard to say how much of Netflix's income comes from App Store revenue, Netflix makes about 10x the revenue of the whole Match Group. Tinder is ~50% of Match Group's income. I suppose Tinder's income is 100% from app stores and Netflix isn't, that's still a ranking I don't think is correct.

 

Maybe my problem is that I'm looking at total revenue and they're trying to guess at new revenue through app stores. So Spotify just had most of their users sign up years ago and they don't count anymore, or something like that. Still, Disney+ added more paying subs in November than Pandora has ever had in its history. I have no insight into people signing up via app vs on the web or through anything else, but I just don't see how Pandora is so high, and I know there is no way to verify YouTube numbers, so it makes me question the rest.

[nublood]

3 hours ago, Dodger said:

I've never even heard of it. 

 

Same.

[Ghost_MH]

@TwinIon

 

I think this list isn't going off of any numbers and is just going off the combined, monthly/weekly, averages for top grossing applications and games from the Play and App stores. That is, if you jump onto the Google Play store right now, the top five grossing apps are Google One, Pandora, ESPN, Tinder, and DIsney+. Top grossing games being Clash of Clans, Dandy Crush Saga, COin Master, Pokemon Go, and Gardenscapes. I don't know how and where Apple reports it, but Google makes this stuff pretty easy to pull up. Also, Pandora is number 2 in the play store right now? ESPN is number 3? Either way, I think Google includes ad revenue in their grossing numbers.

[DarkStar189]

3 hours ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

I wish Tinder was around before I got married. Would've made things so much easier than AOL chat.

a/s/l? 

[XxEvil AshxX]

9 minutes ago, DarkStar189 said:

a/s/l? 

 

How about Got Pic?

 

I remember the first time i learned that BBW didn't stand for Beautiful Blonde Woman.

[TwinIon]

11 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

@TwinIon

 

I think this list isn't going off of any numbers and is just going off the combined, monthly/weekly, averages for top grossing applications and games from the Play and App stores. That is, if you jump onto the Google Play store right now, the top five grossing apps are Google One, Pandora, ESPN, Tinder, and DIsney+. Top grossing games being Clash of Clans, Dandy Crush Saga, COin Master, Pokemon Go, and Gardenscapes. I don't know how and where Apple reports it, but Google makes this stuff pretty easy to pull up. Also, Pandora is number 2 in the play store right now? ESPN is number 3? Either way, I think Google includes ad revenue in their grossing numbers.

I suppose my larger point is that these rankings are either being gamed or are meaningless. What is a anyone supposed to glean from this list when it specifically says "consumer spend." Are we supposed to think that consumers spent more on Tinder than on Netflix? That they spent more on Pandora than any of the missing music apps? That's certainly what it seems to indicate, but neither is remotely true.

 

You're right, Pandora is #1 in the play store right now. In Q3 they made $315M in ads and $132 from subscribers. Spotify made $1.7B from subscriptions and $189M from Ads. 

 

Maybe, despite the title of the list, it includes ad revenue and Pandora's ad revenue gets counted and Spotify's revenues largely don't, or maybe there is some other reason that they show up so high. Both Google and Apple have a section for "top grossing" apps, but we don't really know what metrics they use for those lists or even if they're correct. We do know that none of these companies specifically report this data, so everyone is guessing to some degree. So if we don't know how they guess at the numbers, and the verifiable numbers we do have suggest a different conclusion than the list, I don't think it's worth putting any stock into it.