What Makes an App Succeed? Lessons from Competing on Apple and Google Platforms

In today’s digital economy, mobile apps are everywhere—and so are the entrepreneurs trying to build them. Over 3.8 million apps are available in Apple’s App Store, with new ones entering every day. But what determines whether an app breaks through to success—or quietly fades into the background? In our new research , we analyze over 400,000 mobile apps to understand what drives success.

We focus on two factors: (1) how similar an app is to its rivals, and (2) what happens when the platform owner—Apple or Google—launches its own competing app. These issues sit at the heart of today’s policy debates about self-preferencing, platform power, and competition in digital markets. An important reality for those competing in the app economy is that developers live in ecosystems created by others.

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