India zips past US to become top market for Google's Play Store

NEW DELHI: India zipped past the US to become the top country that registered 6 billion downloads from Google’s Play Store in 2016, according to analytics firm App Annie.

“India’s app market grew massively outpacing the US to surpass it as the #1 country by Google Play downloads, from around 3.5 billion downloads in 2015 to over 6 billion downloads in 2016,” App Annie said in a report. App downloads grew by 15% worldwide across iOS and Google Play, with total time spent in apps increasing by 25%, it added.

In 2016, publishers were paid over $35 billion in revenue across the iOS App Store and Google Play. When including in-app advertising, app store revenue and third-party Android stores in 2016, publishers made over $89 billion in revenue.