Global mobile app analytics platform, App Annie, has released its 2015 Retrospective, a comprehensive report of apps featured on the iOS App Store and Google Play. According to China’s iOS Top Apps Chart, Momo was the top-earning social networking app of China in 2015, surpassing Tencent’s instant messenger, QQ. Excluding games, Momo ranked number two in the general list of apps sorted by revenue, reported tech media outlet TechWeb on Monday.
Excluding games, top earners on iOS in China include: at number one, iQiyi, the streaming video platform backed by Baidu, with Tencent Video coming in at third. The three top-earning publishers (outside of gaming companies) in China were Baidu, Tencent and Momo Technology.
App Annie determines revenue rankings according to combined income from paid downloads on the App Store and in-app purchases. App Annie has been gathering data about app downloads since 2013. In the last three year’s of App Annie reports, Momo earnt the most among all Chinese social apps for three years in a row.
According to Momo’s third quarter financial report in 2015, it earned USD 16 million in membership subscriptions from 3.3 million members and its income from its mobile marketing service amounted to USD 10.8 million, an increase of 35 times compared with the same period in 2014.
The credit for spectacular achievements in revenue is partly as a result of Momo’s growing number of active users. According to the latest report on social networking by iResearch.cn, Momo is at third place for China’s top mobile social networking apps, with its monthly active users and daily active users closely following those of Wechat and QQ.
There are also a few new sources of income for Momo, including live music broadcasting and the interactive platform Momo Live launched last year.
Social networking apps, represented by Momo in 2015, are second only to games in earning capacity and fourth in terms of downloads, with the top three spots secured by games, photo & video apps and entertainment apps.
App Annie, with 500,000 registered members, provides data on mobile apps from all over the world and has become a treasured tool for more than one million app publishers to keep track of their market and users. It landed USD 63M in Series E funding in January.
