Top Apps Vary From Apple To Google To Amazon’s App Store

Earlier today, Apple published its list of top paid and free apps for 2013. Yesterday Nielsen reported its top US smartphone apps list (Android + iPhone). Now comes Distimo’s “year in review” global ranking of apps, which also includes Amazon’s tablet-only app store.

What’s striking is how different the app lists are from one another. For example there are only three apps common to all of the free lists: Candy Crush, Temple Run and Facebook. And only Minecraft and Where’s My Water are present on all three paid app lists according to Distimo.

Some of the discrepancies can probably be explained by app availability on the platform. But audience composition also probably accounts for some of the differences.