Is Pokemon Go The Most Successful App of All Time?

In less than a month,  Pokémon GO has hit 100 million downloads, solidifying the fact Pokemon-mania has swept the globe.

To put this mega milestone into perspective, the top three downloaded apps in the last six months in the U.S. are Facebook Messenger (59.7M), Snapchat (54.5M) and Facebook (45.8M) – according to SurveyMonkey Intelligence.

In fact the only games to reach anywhere close to Pokémon Go downloads are Color Switch and Slither.io, which at roughly 80 days each reached 50 million downloads.

Angry Birds, arguably the most the most popular gaming app of all time was released in 2009 took nearly a year to hit the 50 million mark. But at that time, the market wasn’t saturated with gaming apps.

The milestone for Angry Birds came in 2011 when on Christmas Day the game sold 6.5 million copies in a single day alone.

According to data from App Store intelligence firm App Annie, Pokémon Go has also reached over $10 million in daily revenues and surpassed Facebook in open rate and average time spent per user following its Android release.

Apps on both Android and iOS have not seen any impact financially and downloads across all apps are steady since the release of Pokémon Go but the amount of “non-mobile” time – when people open the app while doing other activities, such as walking the dog or getting stoned, has Pokémon hunters on super high alert.

These numbers are high, particularly due to the fact the game has only been released in 32 markets. Countries like China and Brazil await to have a turn catching all the Pokémon they can. The potential to reach even more downloads once released in other territories could see the popular franchise numbers skyrocket even greater once available.

Other apps that have joined the 100 million download club include the popular dating app Tinder, which was launched in 2012 and took four years to reach the mark which it did last January.

Critics claim Pokémon Go download numbers will drop but the average time spent on the app is increasing daily, meaning users are playing the game at a high rate. It will be interesting to see what the franchise has in store in the next few months and it’s only safe to assume that the upcoming holiday season will bring more milestones for the Pokémon Go.