Global Prosperity or Local Monopoly? Understanding the Geography of App Popularity

App stores allow developers to globally distribute their apps to gain more users and attention. In the highly competitive market of app stores, developers need to cater to a large number of users spanning multiple countries. We posit that the characteristics of diverse geographical, linguistic, cultural, societal, and economic environments may impact the adoption of apps. In this paper, we take the first step to characterize popular apps across over 150 countries worldwide, and explore the potential correlations to a number of underlying factors including geography, language as well as cultural, societal, and economic dimensions. Our study is based on a longitudinal (one-year) dataset of daily app popularity from the iOS app stores, covering 154 regions around the world. We reveal that app popularity shows great diversity across the world, while similarities exist among countries that share geographical proximity and linguistic convergence. The differences in app popularity across regions can be further correlated with the cultural model and socioeconomic indices we adopt. On top of the dataset and findings, we implement a prediction task that contributes to app distribution, helping developers choose the right market to distribute and promote their apps. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to attempt to provide a global understanding of the characteristics of app popularity across the mobile app ecosystem. Our observations can benefit stakeholders in the ecosystem, striving to improve app uptake.