One finding of App Annie's research is how well some small apps publishers can do compared to large ones. Supercell, the creator of the popular Clash of Clans game, employs about 70 developers and other staff, but earns as much from its two apps as many gaming publishers with 3,000 workers and many apps, he said.
Supercell finished second in revenues in October on the App Store, behind Electronic Arts, and ahead of Zynga, Lo said.
In the case of Apple's App Store and Google Play, nearly all the top 10 apps publishers by revenue were game publishers. The only non-game publisher in the top 10 revenue producers on the App Store was Apple, which provides a range of productivity apps such as iWork.
For Google Play, the only non-game publisher in the top 10 revenue generators was Naver, a maker of messaging and other apps.
App Annie plans to publish its free App Annie Index via a blog each month to show trends on Google Play and App Store, Lo said. More detailed data is contained in a different report sold to the industry that starts at $15,000 for an annual subscription. The data is obtained for the app stores by looking at actual downloads and revenues for 150,000 of the largest apps, and comparing those findings with the rankings of those apps in the markets, Lo said.
Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at 
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