Distimo's report on the global app store market shows that there is a lot of money to be made from apps but that much of it goes to a small number of highly successful apps.

App analytics experts Distimo has looked at downloads from Apple's App Store and Google Play in its 2012 Year In Review report.

Using revenues data from twenty countries, ones that generally have the highest revenues as shown in this map, it concluded that November 2012 the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad had a daily revenue of $15M USD compared to $3.5M USD in Google Play.

(click in map to enlarge)

Distimo also reports that The United States is still the largest market by revenue, followed by Japan, the United Kingdom and Australia. Looking at Google Play only, Japan rivals the United States. Perhaps surprisingly while Japan is the second largest market for iPhone revenues, it has almost no iPad app sales. Another Google Play success example is South Korea, Samsung’s hometown, which has low revenues from iPhone and iPad apps, but is the third largest country in terms of revenues in Google Play.

Another key finding in the report is that Google Play showed strong growth between August and November, with an aggregated growth in daily revenue of 43% across the countries monitored, while the Apple App Store, which is ahead in terms of absolute values  grew by 21% in daily revenue in the same period.

Distimo also found that in the Apple App Store the proportion of revenue from in-app purchases grew from 53% in January 2012 to 69% in November 2012.

One possibly depressing finding is that, in November 2012, only 4 applications were responsible for 10% of Google Play
revenue. In comparison 7 apps in the App Store for iPhone and 6 apps in the App Store for iPad shared 10% of the revenue. When it comes to free apps 22% on Google Play and 31% on App Store account for 10% of downloads.