Jun 21, 2017

The top iPhone apps are taking up a lot more space

Ina Fried

The top iPhone apps have been taking up an increasing amount of space on the device. Sensor Tower reported Tuesday that the total space required by the top 10 most installed U.S. iPhone apps is now nearly 2 gigabytes, up twelvefold since May 2013 when the top 10 apps occupied just 164 megabytes of space combined.

Data: Sensor Tower's analysis of App Intelligence; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon / Axios

Why? There are two big factors at play, and both are tied to moves by Apple itself. First, the iPhone maker has been raising the cap on the size of apps, most recently lifting the maximum to 4GB in early 2015. Secondly, the phones themselves are also coming with more memory, increasing consumer's willingness to put up with bigger apps.

Snapchat has grown the most and is now 50 times the size it was four years ago (204MB vs. just 4MB in 2013).

It's also worth noting these sizes refer just to the amount of space taken up by apps themselves. Associated files can take up way more space, especially for video and audio content.

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