Mobile App Statistics 2026: Usage, Spending and Canada Data

These mobile app statistics for 2026 bring together the most recent figures on how much people use apps, how much they spend in them and what Canadians in particular carry in their pockets. We only used numbers we could trace to the organisation that published them: Sensor Tower, Apple, Google, StatCounter and Statistics Canada. Where the latest public figure is from 2020 or 2022, we say so next to it.

The 2026 mobile app numbers at a glance

The short version: people use apps more than ever, spend more inside them than ever, and in Canada they mostly do it on an iPhone. Every figure below links to the organisation that published it, and the year in the third column is the year the data describes, not the year it was reported.

Two things stand out. First, the growth is in money, not in downloads: downloads were almost flat while spending rose by double digits. Second, Canada is an iPhone market in a world that mostly runs Android, which changes how a Canadian business should plan its first release.

How much do people use mobile apps?

People spent 5.3 trillion hours in iOS and Google Play apps in 2025, up 3.8% on 2024, which Sensor Tower works out to roughly 3.6 hours per mobile user per day. That figure comes from Sensor Tower's State of Mobile 2026 report, published in January 2026, and it covers the two main stores only. Third-party Android stores in China are not included.

Apple's own numbers point the same way. Its 2025 App Store Transparency Report gives an average of 892,670,823 weekly visitors to the App Store, 929,754,061 weekly app downloads and 2,053,461,208 weekly redownloads. Redownloads outnumber first downloads by more than two to one, which tells you how much of the store's traffic is people coming back to apps they already know.

Updates are the largest number in the report by far: an average of 46,630,867,840 automatic app updates a week, plus 701,572,983 manual ones. Your users mostly never see an update happen. They just get it.

Apple reports a slightly different figure elsewhere. Its June 2026 ecosystem announcement mentions "over 850 million average weekly users", while the transparency report counts 892,670,823 weekly visitors. These measure different things (users versus visits to the store) and both come from Apple, so we show both rather than pick one.

What this means for you: attention is not the scarce part. Time in apps keeps rising, but almost all of it goes to apps people already have on their phone. A new app competes for a slot on the home screen, not for raw screen time, so the first week of use matters more than the download count. Our guides on onboarding and retention cover how to win that slot.

How much do people spend in apps?

Consumers spent $167 billion USD on in-app purchases across iOS and Google Play in 2025, up 10.6% on 2024, according to Sensor Tower. Sensor Tower's own press release rounds the growth to 10%, and its report summary says 10.6%. We use the more precise number and note the difference.

The bigger story is who earned it. Non-game apps passed games in in-app purchase revenue for the first time. Non-game revenue rose 21% year over year and reached nearly three times what it was five years earlier, while games grew 1.3% to approach $82 billion.

The United States was the largest market by revenue, with consumers spending nearly $60 billion there in 2025. Sensor Tower does not publish a Canada figure in its free summary, and we did not find a reliable public one, so we have not included an estimate.

Apple's figure is far larger because it counts something else. The App Store ecosystem facilitated over $1.4 trillion USD in developer billings and sales in 2025, according to a study by economists at Analysis Group that Apple announced on June 4, 2026. Most of that is physical goods and services bought through apps: $1.1 trillion. Digital goods and services were $149 billion and in-app advertising was $151 billion. Apple says developers paid no commission on more than 90 percent of it, because physical goods and services sold through an app (a ride, a meal, a product) do not go through Apple's in-app purchase system.

What this means for you: if your app sells something physical or a real-world service, the store commission does not apply to those sales, and the economics of an app are mostly about convenience and repeat orders. If you sell digital content or subscriptions, the store takes a share, and that share is set out in the fees section below. Either way, plan the revenue model before the build: our guide to monetizing an app walks through the options.

What phones and apps do Canadians use?

Canadians mostly use iPhones. In September 2026, iOS accounted for 64.87% of mobile operating system use in Canada and Android for 35.13%, according to StatCounter. Worldwide, the split is close to the reverse: Android 69.17% and iOS 30.81% in the same month.

StatCounter measures share of web page views from devices on the sites it tracks, not the number of phones sold, so treat it as a usage signal rather than a census. It is still the most current public figure for Canada, updated monthly.

Statistics Canada's figures are older but official. In its Canadian Internet Use Survey, 84.4% of Canadians aged 15 and over had a smartphone for personal use in 2020, up from 80.3% in 2018. In 2020, 43.4% said they checked their smartphone at least every 30 minutes. These are the most recent years Statistics Canada published for those questions in that table, so they are now six years old. We say so plainly rather than present them as current.

The two banking figures look like they disagree, but they use different bases. The 78% in the July 2023 release is a share of all Canadians aged 15 and over. The 82% in the March 2024 release is a share of Internet users only. Both describe 2022.

The most recent Canada-specific App Store figures we could find from Apple date from April 2021: the App Store supported more than 243,000 jobs in Canada, Canadian developers had earned more than $2 billion CAD in total, and 90 percent of Canadian developer revenue came from outside the country. They are five years old, so use them as background only.

What this means for you: a business selling to Canadians should not plan around the global Android majority. For most Canadian consumer audiences an iPhone version is not optional, and for many it is the right first platform. Check your own customers before deciding, because a trades business or a newcomer-focused service can skew the other way. Our iOS vs Android guide explains how to check, and a cross-platform build covers both from one codebase.

Which app categories are growing fastest?

Generative AI apps grew fastest in 2025. Sensor Tower reports their downloads doubled to 3.8 billion, their in-app purchase revenue nearly tripled to more than $5 billion, and time spent in them reached 48 billion hours, about 3.6 times the 2024 total and nearly 10 times the 2023 level.

Apple sees the same pattern from the other side. In its June 2026 announcement it said more than 40 of the top 100 apps on the App Store featured consumer-facing AI capabilities in 2025, and that those apps saw stronger billing growth than the rest of the top 100.

What this means for you: AI features are now expected rather than novel in many categories, but the growth numbers belong mostly to a few very large AI apps. For a business app, AI earns its place when it removes a step for the user, such as reading a document, drafting a reply or answering a question about an order. Our guide to building an AI app covers where it pays off and where it only adds cost. On our price sheet, AI features are an add-on of $2,000 to $5,000 CAD.

How fast do iPhone users update?

Very fast. As measured by devices that transacted on the App Store on June 7, 2026, 86% of iPhones introduced in the last four years were running iOS 26, and 79% of all iPhones were. On iPad, the figures were 79% and 68%. Apple publishes these on its App Store support page.

That speed is why Apple can move its minimums often. Since September 9, 2026, iOS and iPadOS apps uploaded to App Store Connect must target iOS 13 or later, and since April 28, 2026 they must be built with Xcode 26 and the iOS 26 SDK. Apple has also announced that from April 2027 iOS and iPadOS apps must be built with the iOS 27 SDK. We cover the full list in our app store deadlines guide.

What this means for you: you rarely need to support very old iPhone software, which keeps testing cheaper. The flip side is that the build tools move every year, so an app nobody touches for 18 months will fall behind the store's requirements even if nothing in it is broken.

How big are the app stores, and what do they charge?

The App Store listed 2,172,472 apps in 2025, up from 1,961,596 in 2024, and Apple counted 60,597,750 registered developers, up from 51,766,243. The store is available in 175 countries and regions. Google does not publish an equivalent app count in the sources we used, so we have not quoted one.

Store fees are the number that most often surprises a founder. Here is what each store publishes today for a developer selling to Canadian customers.

Google changed its fees in some markets in 2026. For users in the European Economic Area, the UK and the US, a new structure based on whether a user's install is new or existing took effect on June 30, 2026, and for Australia and Japan on September 30, 2026. Canada stays on the older structure "until the announced updated service fees are rolled out globally", in Google's words. No date has been given for that. Google also says 97% of developers distribute their apps on Google Play at no charge, and that 99% of those who do pay a fee are eligible for 15% or less.

What this means for you: for most small businesses the effective store fee on digital sales is 15%, and on physical goods and services it is zero. Build that into your pricing from the start, and if you sell outside Canada check the market rules, because they are no longer the same everywhere.

How we compiled these statistics

We checked every figure on this page on October 23, 2026, against the page that first published it. The sources are listed at the bottom with links.

• Sources used: Sensor Tower's State of Mobile 2026 report summary and press release, Apple's 2024 and 2025 App Store Transparency Reports, Apple Newsroom, Apple Developer pages, Google Play Console Help, StatCounter Global Stats and Statistics Canada.
• Currency: amounts are in US dollars as published unless we say CAD. Our own prices are in CAD.
• What we excluded: numbers from blogs and listicles that do not name where the figure came from, paid-report figures we could not see, and projections of future market size. We also left out any Canada spending estimate, because we did not find one from a source that shows its method.
• Known limits: Sensor Tower's figures are estimates covering iOS and Google Play only. Apple's figures are self-reported. StatCounter measures web usage on the sites it tracks. Statistics Canada's smartphone data is from 2020, the latest year published for that table.

We will update this page when Sensor Tower, Apple or Statistics Canada publish newer figures. If you spot a number that has changed at the source, our editorial standards page explains how to report it.

What these numbers mean if you are planning an app

The data supports three practical decisions. Use them as a starting point, then test them against your own customers.

1. Pick the platform from your users, not the world. Canada leans heavily to iPhone. If you serve Canadian consumers, budget for iOS from day one, and consider a cross-platform build for both.
2. Plan how the app earns before you plan screens. Spending is growing much faster than downloads. A clear reason to pay or to come back beats a large launch.
3. Budget for upkeep. Store rules change every year. Our price sheet puts maintenance at roughly 15 to 20% of the build cost per year, or a monthly plan. The rebuild or update guide explains what happens when that is skipped.

If the numbers say an app is worth it for your business, our is it worth building an app guide turns them into a decision, and the app store review statistics show what it takes to get approved.