What Are The Top 7 App Categories That Dominated 2022

The soul of the smartphone lies in the app installed on it. It is the reason why users go around installing apps on their phones. Users install a few of these apps to meet a specific need, whereas the other set of apps is installed for recreational purposes.

In the past few years, both Google Play Store and Apple App Store saw a massive increase in revenue thanks to improved internet penetration, speed, and smartphone affordability. 2022 was no different for both platforms in revenue generation, and here is the list of this year’s top seven app categories.

What Are The Top 7 App Categories That Dominated 2022

1. Gaming Apps

With an improved internet speed and the rollout of 5G, gaming apps are the popular app category. Use Speed Test to check your internet speed to check whether you can play heavy games seamlessly or not. In the Apple App Store, the gaming category holds 12.68% of all the apps. This percentage is slightly higher for the Google Play Store, where the share of gaming apps is close to 13.8%.

The games that dominated Google Play Store in 2022 are Stumble Guys, Stick War: Hero Tower Defense and School Party Craft. On the other hand, the most popular games on the Apple App Store were X-Hero, Survivor!.io and Subway Surfer- Official Chinese Store. All these games require a good internet speed which can be checked on Google Fiber for a good gaming experience.

2. Business Apps

The business category is the next popular app category on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store. In the Apple App Store, the share of business category apps this year was 10.35%. However, on Google Play Store is the third most popular category, with 7.11% of all downloaded apps belonging to the business category.

3. Education Apps

The second most popular category in Google Play is the education category, with a share of 10.47%. However, in the Apple App Store, it is the third most popular category. Of all the apps available on Apple App Store, 9.79% belong to the educational category. Duolingo again dominated 2022 as one of the leading language learning apps.

4. Tools and Utilities

Tools or utilities emerged as the fourth most popular category in both stores. This category includes apps which work like a digital toolbox. It often contains apps storage cleaner apps and browsers. In 2022, the expected revenue from this segment was close to $4.81 billion. With a CAGR rate of 7.1% between 2022 and 2026, the projected revenue from this category is $6.33 billion.

5. Lifestyle Apps

The lifestyle app is the fifth most popular category in the Apple App Store, with a share of 7.93%. Surprisingly, in Google Play Store, it is ranked eighth in the most popular app category with a share of only 4.53%. The total revenue generated from Lifestyle apps is much more than the tools and utility category. The revenue by segment in 2022 was $10.62 billion. Most of the revenue for lifestyle apps comes from China, and the average revenue per download of the lifestyle app is approximately $2.16.

6. Food and Drink Apps

This category holds the seventh position in the Google Play Store and fifth in the Apple App Store in popularity. The number of downloads of these apps across the globe was over 888 million. Asia-Pacific and America saw the highest downloads of food and drink apps this year.

7. Shopping Apps

It is another prevalent app category in both stores. On iPhone, OfferUp is the most popular shopping app in the USA, with a revenue of $872,366.

Other Popular App Categories

Entertainment and the music category were also popular on Google Play Store. However, the same cannot be said for the Apple App Store, where it was one of the least popular categories. The least popular category on Google Play Stores for 2022 was the sports and social category, followed by the communication category. On the other hand, photography, news and music were the least popular app categories on the Apple App Store.

Interestingly, even though the top categories on both platforms were nearly similar, the same is not valid for the least popular category. Please note that the share of available apps was selected as the criteria for determining the popularity of the apps mentioned.