The Japanese app market is one of the most lucrative and active in the world. It has the third highest country consumer spend, behind only China and the United States, and the number of smartphone users continues to rise.
Even with that high revenue per capita, Japanese users spend a lot less time on the internet than other countries, at just over four hours. Some countries average over four hours more than them.
Japan's app economy is quite insular, with a lot of the apps and games designed for a Japanese audience. For ecommerce, Japanese have Rakuten, for messaging Line, for payments PayPay. A lot of the most popular games are developed in Japan, such as Monster Strike, Fate/Grand Order and Dragon Quest Walk.
That said, the market has opened up for large multinational competitors such as Amazon, Google and Instagram. The difference is there is usually a regional competitor that actually has decent market share, possibly due to the language and cultural differences that local operators understand better.
Japan is also rather slow on the mobile adoption front, with a decent amount of internet usage still happening on PC. Unlike its neighbours in China, South Korea and Taiwan, most of the Japanese grew up with PCs and laptops, and have not been able to move to the mobile generation as fast as others.
We have collected data and statistics on the Japan mobile app market. Read on below to find out more.
Key Japan App Market Statistics
- The Japanese app market generated $16.5 billion in 2024, an annual decline of 7.8%
- Japanese smartphone users spent an average of $166 on apps, one of the highest figures worldwide
- Comic book app Piccoma was the top grossing app in the country with $400 million consumer spend
- Japanese users installed more than two billion apps in 2024
- The average Japanese smartphone user downloaded 25.3 apps in 2024
- TikTok was the most installed app in Japan in 2024, ahead of Temu and Threads
- Japanese internet users spend just over four hours on the internet, one of the lowest figures in the world
- Japan's internet consumption is split evenly between PC and mobile
- The average cellular speed in Japan was 51.9Mbps in 2024, lower than average for Asia
