Microsoft Win10 Eco Trend: Developers' 55% Revenue comes from in-app purchases

Computer Store News: Microsoft today announced in its official blog the current trends in application downloads for Windows Phone and Windows Store. The results show that in-app purchase revenue accounts for 55% of total developer revenue.

This new number comes from a quarterly statistical report from January to March 2015, indicating that for developers, in-app purchases are becoming a more important revenue channel than paid apps.

Microsoft says:

In-app purchases (ie IAP) revenues have been growing month by month, and we saw IAP revenue share of total developer revenue in the last quarter. The highest point in history, this is mainly due to the release of some new applications/games, such as: "Imperial Age: Siege Castle", "Spartan Wars", "Wild Cars 8: Extreme Speed ​​Cloud", "Candy Crush Legend" Fanaticism: The Legend, "My Talking Angela," The Freedom of the Sims. These new apps/games rely primarily on in-app purchases to generate revenue.

Currently, the US is still the largest market for Win8.1 and WP applications, but Microsoft has noticed a significant increase in WP app downloads in India, Brazil and Vietnam during the last quarter. Part of the reason for this may be related to the carrier billing method recently introduced in these countries.

Microsoft claims:

Due to the low popularity of credit cards in these markets, carrier billing payment methods provide a convenient channel for these potential paying users.

80% of downloads in the Windows Phone app store come from WP8.1 devices, and 93% of Windows Store downloads come from Windows 8.1 devices. 68% of Windows Phone app downloads come from low-storage devices, which include 256MB or newer saved Windows 7.x devices and 512MB of stored Windows Phone 8.x devices.

Not surprisingly, games are still the most popular app category in the two app stores, while social apps have the highest share of downloads, followed by photo-photo apps.

At the end of this month, Microsoft will host the BUILD 2015 Developer Conference, and Win10 will undoubtedly be the focus of the conference.