Will Getting Banned in Brazil Hurt X's Bottom Line?
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Goodbye Summer. Check out the full article for more insights.
Welcome to September, the end of summer in the western hemisphere and also the end of August, which means it's time for our monthly check-in on X's revenue.
And while I'm looking, I'll also answer a question I was recently curious about - how will X's revenue be impacted now that it's banned in Brazil, one of the biggest driver of downloads on Android?
According to our App Intelligence, X crossed a big milestone in August earning a whopping $10.8M of net revenue - what Elon gets to keep after Apple and Google take their fees. That's a very healthy increase of 21% from July, which was X's previous high watermark and the first month of revenue growth since early 2024.
The majority of the new revenue came from the App Store with Google Play also increasing, but not by much. That's while downloads from both the App Store and Google Play dropped slightly from July - A trend most apps are experiencing (except for AI, more on that in the near future).
Demand for X is not following any standard pattern in terms of downloads and revenue because it's become extremely political and for many, the decision of whether to be on or off the platform is more about what it symbolizes than the value it provides. For that reason, it's hard to predict what'll happen, but it's clear that even with this uncertain future, X follows the trend we see with many other apps where downloads are dropping and revenue is growing.
Oh, Brazil!
Without getting into the politics of things, or trying to estimate the downloads that won't be, I was curious if there will be an immediate impact on X's bottom line now that it isn't available in Brazil. For context, X was downloaded 5.4M times in Brazil so far in 2024, according to our estimates.
The answer is pretty simple - no.
Although X made its way into millions of devices in Brazil, it didn't open many pockets. Looking at our App Intelligence, X earned 141K of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play in August - just a little over 1% of total revenue. A rounding error, as some would say.
And that was X's best month of revenue from Brazil. I doubt Elon would notice.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
