Japan Spending the Most on Mobile Apps Globally

Japan has beaten the States by 10% in overall app-spending, according to a new report. Per capita, the Japanese are spending 2.5 times as much on apps as Americans are. The majority of the apps the Japanese invest in are games, with spending on games apps having increased by 400 percent over the past year. In comparison, the rest of the world only spends twice as much on games as other apps. This is in part due to the sheer amount of television-based advertising that the Japanese engage in – according to the report, the biggest hits of the years all had spikes in downloads after the launch of an advertising campaign on TV. The report also cites Japan’s belated shifted to smartphones as a reason, as well as the fact that the Google Play app store operates a carrier-billing model with the biggest operators – this means that consumers can pay for their app downloads as part of their monthly phone bill rather than within the app store itself.