This chart shows why Kim Kardashian's new emoji app is a genius money-making move
Kim Kardashian's new cartoon emoticon app, Kimoji, shot up to the top of the App Store's paid app chart on its first day of release. Three weeks into its release, Kimoji still remains the number one paid app.
The massive popularity of Kimoji reflects a broader trend in the smartphone app market: the huge growth of personalization apps.
According to data from mobile research firm Flurry, charted for us by Statista, personalization apps, like Kimoji, saw a whopping 332% annual growth in usage last year, the fastest among any other app category. That's nearly 6-times the 58% average growth the entire app market saw in the same period. Flurry defines usage as opening and recording a "session" with the app.
Personalization apps include everything from Android lock-screens to simple emoji keyboard apps. But Flurry noted that most of the growth in personalization apps came from emoji apps similar to Kimoji that let users share customized emoticons across multiple platforms, like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Snapchat.
News and magazine apps saw the second highest growth, followed by utilities and lifestyle/shopping apps. Surprisingly, game apps were the only category that dropped in usage rates last year.
