App Industry Led by Tinder Tops $50B in Revenue for First Half of 2020

The app industry saw revenue spike to $50.1 billion for the first two quarters of 2020, in part due to people isolating at home to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Dating app Tinder topped the list of non-game app revenue earners.

This marks a 23.4% increase from the first half of 2019 according to Tech Crunch, compared with a 20% increase for the same time period between 2018 and 2019. The data seems to also point to a growing new user base. First time app installs were up 26.1% in the first half of 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019, and reached a total of 71.5 billion downloads.

Topping the non-game app list was dating app Tinder, followed by YouTube, and popular social apps TikTok and Tencent. Netflix was the fifth-highest earner.

There was speculation earlier this year that dating apps would see a decline in revenue as businesses shuttered and unemployment rose. Match Group pointed out on an investor call that while they were seeing more in-app spending and more people spending time using their suite of apps, their subscriber base was not growing by comparison, which indicated a slowdown in expected revenue growth.

In terms of overall dating app revenue across the globe, Tinder, Bumble, Pairs, MeetMe and Tantan topped the list, according to Sensor Tower.

Top Grossing Dating Apps for May, 2020

Image: SensorTower

The biggest earner among dating apps was also Tinder, Match Group’s star dating app. During Q1 and Q2, consumers spent $433 million on Tinder across both Apple and Google Play stores, which is still a decrease of about 19% from this time in 2019 (which was $532 million according to Tech Crunch). Tinder pulled in more than $65.3 million in just the month of May, with 41.5 percent of it coming from U.S. users according to Sensor Tower’s Store Intelligence platform. Great Britain was second with 5.6 percent followed by Japan at 5.4 percent. Bumble was the second-highest grossing app in May with about $16 million in revenue, and about 76.2% of that from U.S. consumers.

Dating app usage has boomed during stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, and companies have rushed to bring more features to attract new users, such as in-app video services. Tinder offered its popular “Passport” feature at no cost, letting users match with anyone around the world since they weren’t able to meet in person anyway. This could have also affected 2020 revenue, according to Tech Crunch.

Consumers have been downloading all apps in greater numbers this year while they have been stuck at home. TikTok was the most downloaded app with 626 million installs, although this is expected to decrease now that India banned 59 Chinese apps including TikTok.