Download Trends

Get market insights directly from the Google Play Store.

Milica Siriski avatar
Written by Milica Siriski
Updated over a week ago

The Download Trends is an app market insight feature that allows you to see the most downloaded apps for a selected period of time and a specific category.

You can explore this feature from two perspectives:

App View

In the App View, you see the 250 most downloaded apps inside the Google Play Store worldwide. In order to make your research based on your needs, you can select a date range and a specific category.

Then, you will get a list of the most downloaded apps based on your search. In the table, you can find the following information:

  • Rank: The current rank of that app in the chosen category based on the number of downloads;

  • App: The app name and icon. Click on the icon to see the store listing of the app, further information, and the button to add as a competitor;

  • Total: The total number of downloads;

  • Selected Period: The total number of downloads in the selected time frame;

  • Chart: You can toggle the chart button to visualize the download trends of an app. You can hover over the chart lines to get the exact number of downloads for a specific day;

  • Details: The "Details" button, just like the app icon, takes you to the store listing of that app and also gives you further information about the app and the possibility of adding it to your competitor's list.

Developer View

In this view, it's all about successful app developers worldwide. The reason why this view is important is that many developers have a portfolio of apps. Therefore, it's not enough to analyze one app to understand how successful a developer is.

The Developer View works in the same way as the App View. You can select a date range and a specific category. Then, you will get a list of the 250 most downloaded developers in that category in the Google Play Store during that period of time.

The table looks very similar to the App View, except for the distribution column. Let's take a closer look at it:

  • Rank: The current rank of that developer based on the total download number;

  • Developer: The developer's name;

  • Total: The total number of downloads the developer has for all their portfolio;

  • Selected Period: The total number of downloads the developer has for all their portfolio in the selected time frame;

  • Distribution: The distribution column gives you a small line chart based on how many apps the developer has and which apps bring the most downloads. When you hover over the distribution chart, you can see that the dark grey indicates the most successful apps inside the developer's portfolio. In contrast, the light grey indicates the ones that brought fewer downloads. The distribution chart shows the following information:

-> The app name and icon;

-> The total number of downloads of the app, independently of the selected time period;

-> The download share in percentage that app had concerning the developer's total number of downloads. This is great to find out which is the strongest app from a developer's portfolio;

Bear in mind that when you choose a category, you will only see the apps from that category. For example, Google LLC has 132 apps in different categories, but when you select "Music & Audio," you will only see in the distribution chart apps from that category. If you want to see the downloads to all Google LLC's portfolio, you'll have to click on the column "Details."

If the developer has only one app, you will see the distribution chart in one color.

  • Chart: Toggle the button to visualize the download trends of a developer. You can also hover over the chart lines to get the exact number of downloads for a specific day.

  • Details: The details button gives you a breakdown view of the distribution column. When you click on details, you can see the whole list of apps from that developer and the percentage of downloads each app had based on the developer's total number of downloads.

This is a great feature to get a deep analysis of the app market and also to find new competitors and popular apps. A great way to use this feature in your favor is to discover successful apps in your category. Then, you can use the App Downloads feature to compare the daily download numbers with your app or any other competitor.

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