Five Markets, Five Realities

The average revenue per user on the App Store in the United States runs roughly ten times what the same metric yields in India — a disparity that shapes everything from how Apple and Google price their commission tiers to how regulators in each jurisdiction frame the competitive harm they claim to be correcting.

Sensor Tower's 2024 market reports place US iOS ARPU among the highest globally, with Japan consistently close behind — a product of high device penetration, mature consumer willingness to pay for digital subscriptions, and a games market where premium spending is culturally embedded. Western Europe clusters well below those two but still far above the global median. Southeast Asia sits lower still, where mobile-first users dominate but average spending per head remains constrained by purchasing-power gaps. India occupies the floor of that comparison, with ARPU figures that Appfigures' regional breakdowns, published through 2024, describe as a fraction of US levels even as the raw install volumes are among the largest anywhere.

A laptop screen showing a developer analytics console with revenue figures visible, an adult's hands resting on the keyboard, photographed in office light
A developer analytics console. Almost every public figure here is an estimate read off a screen.Photo: Jakub Zerdzicki / Pexels

That gap drives a structural tension in commission economics. A flat 30 percent take on in-app purchases extracts very different absolute sums across those markets. A developer selling a subscription priced for US consumers either raises barriers for lower-ARPU markets or accepts a thinner margin — and the platform collects its percentage either way. The App Store Small Business Programme's 15 percent tier for developers earning under one million dollars annually was designed partly to address this, though critics note that the threshold itself is set in US-dollar terms.

Regulators have noticed the geography. The Japan Fair Trade Commission's 2021 inquiry into Apple's payment policies and South Korea's 2021 amendment to its Telecommunications Business Act ↗ — the first law in any jurisdiction to mandate third-party payment options — both drew explicitly on the argument that ARPU disparities meant platform fees hit local developers and consumers asymmetrically. In India, the Competition Commission opened its own App Store investigation in 2021, citing market-specific pricing concerns ↗ that US-calibrated commission structures could not easily address.

The ARPU ladder

United Stateshighest iOS ARPU globally; Sensor Tower 2024
Japanclose second; premium games market key driver
Western Europematerially below US/Japan; above global median
Southeast Asialower; mobile-first but constrained spending power
Indialowest among major markets; growing via UPI-linked billing

The numbers are not static. Sensor Tower's data shows Indian ARPU growing year on year as UPI-linked in-app billing matures, narrowing the gap incrementally — without yet closing it.