Netflix for iOS Becomes Top Grossing App for the First Time

At the time of posting, the official iOS app of the popular video subscription streaming service is already down at the No. 2 spot, having been dethroned by the Arnold Schwarzenegger-endorsed modern warfare game Mobile Strike. But for a brief period yesterday, Dec. 5, it occupied the highest position on the App Store’s top grossing chart for iPhone apps in the U.S., as well as in Colombia, India, and Mexico, according to the app data tracking company Sensor Tower.

The App Store’s top grossing chart essentially ranks the apps that have garnered the most gross income from their in-app purchases. Netflix has been supporting in-app purchases for subscriptions to its video streaming service since September 2015.

As visualized in Sensor Tower’s graph above, after some initial troubles, Netflix had been on a steady ascent to the No. 1 position of the top grossing chart since its introduction of in-app subscriptions over a year ago — until it finally claimed the top spot yesterday. In the interim — from September 2015 through November 2016, by Sensor Tower’s reckoning in the graph below — its weekly net revenue increased from less than $50,000 to nearly $2.9 million.

Netflix’s holding of the No. 1 position on the top grossing chart on the App Store notably comes just days after the app was updated with the long-awaited ability to download content for offline playback.

But one would be remiss if one did not consider Netflix’s ever-expanding catalog of original programming — including “Daredevil,” “Stranger Things,” and the recently premiered “Gilmore Girls” revival — as being a factor in attracting more subscribers and leading to the app’s becoming the top grosser on the App Store.