App Annie’s Top 52 Mobile App Publishers – But Who is Missing

Last month, App Annie released it’s annual index of the top App Publishers in the mobile eco system. This is a tradition that App Annie has been going at for 3 years now. The winners not just get recognition but are also getting a very nice present. You can find the full list for 2016 in the image below as well as in the table where I also added some revenue numbers based on the companies financial reports.

App Annie used IAP revenue as the criteria for the list

There are obviously many ways to compare between companies and App Annie had to select one. Based on my analysis, App Annie is using revenues as the index in this list. This means that a publisher with 4.5B total downloads to date is not in the list while Miniclip is closing the list with a reported downloads number of 500M across all titles. That’s a fair decision, revenue is more important than downloads in the eyes of most people.

The other choice that App Annie made is a bit odd in my opinion. App Annie is ignoring ad revenue and is only measuring IAP revenue for the Index. It seems that Supercell and MZ are high on the list without any advertising revenues while companies who relay only on ad monetization are not on the list at all. Sure, the industry has been focused on In-App Purchases as the main monetization model but even App Annie reports that this is all changing.

App publishers who monetize with ads like Facebook were ignored

The one app publisher that is clearly missing from the first spot is Facebook. They are obviously the #1 app publisher in the world. In 2016, the company made $22.5B from mobile advertising revenues out of their total $27.6B. One might say that Facebook is a tech giant that shouldn’t be on the list but if you look at the company who currently holds the first spot on the list – it is Tencent. Tencent has almost twice as many employees and a similar size user base on it’s messaging and social networking apps as Facebook.

Here are a few companies that should have made the list based on publicly available information:

Another company that would probably make the list but we couldn’t find public revenue number is Outfit7. The company was recently acquired for $1B which suggests an annuarl revenue of at least $250M based in industry benchmarks such as the acquisition of King.com with a multiplier of 3.3x ($2B reported in 2015 and valuation of $6.6B).

Google would also easily make this list with mobile apps such as YouTube, Chrome and the Search app. However, they are the operators of the Google Play App Marketplace and are also in the business of selling Android based phones such as the Nexus and the Pixel so they should be excluded from this race.

The top 52 publishers according to App Annie

Below you can find the table of App Annie’s top 52. I added the revenue stats for some of the public companies so you can see what are the thresholds for different spots in the list.

This table is also available as a google spreadsheet here

Here is AppAnnie’s original list in an infographic format.

As well as in a text format:

1. Tencent, China
2. Supercell, Finland
3. NetEase, China
4. MZ, United States
5. Activision Blizzard, United States
6. Mixi, Japan
7. Line, Japan
8. Bandai Namco, Japan
9. Netmarble, South Korea
10. Niantic, United States,
11. GungHoOnline Entertainment, Japan
12. Square Enix, Japan
13. Electronic Arts, United States
14. Sony, Japan
15. Elex Technology, China
16. COLOPL, Japan
17. GAMEVIL, Sourt Korea
18. Ceasers Entertainment, United States
19. CyberAgent, Japan
20. DeNA, Japan
21. Zynga, United States
22. KONAMI, Japan
23. Chrchill Downs, United States
24. InterActiveCorp (IAC), United States
25. Spotify, Sweden
26. SEGA SAMMY, Japan
27. IGG, China
28. Perfect World, China
29. Kabam, United States
30. NEXON, Japan
31. Time Warner, United States
32. Playrix, Russia
33. Happy Elements, China
34. Snail Games, China
35. Netflix, United States
36. Glu, United States
37. Baidu, China
38. Scientific Games, United States
39. GREE, Japan
40. International Game Technology, United States
41. Scopely, United States
42. gumi inc, Japan
43. Marvelous, Japan
44. Microsoft, United States
45. Klab, Japan
46. Aristocrat, Australia
47. G-bits, China
48. Vivendi, France
49. Kunlun, China
50. Long Tech Network, China
51. Ateam, Japan
52. Miniclip, Switzerland