Publishers Earning Under $1 Million Generate Just 2% of App Store Games Revenue

Summary

According to Sensor Tower, from Jan to Oct 2020, close to 29,000 publishers earned revenue from games on the App Store. Only 940 publishers (3.3%) generated $38.4B, representing 98% of total games revenue. The remaining 28,000 publishers (96.7%) earned under $1M, totaling $834M (2%).

Apple's new policy reducing its cut to 15% for developers earning under $1M will have little impact on its bottom line, as most revenue comes from top publishers. The share of revenue from small publishers has declined over the years, from 3% in 2018 to 2% in 2020. Overall, across all apps, 97.5% of publishers earn under $1M but generate only 4.8% of total App Store revenue.