Apple App Store Finally Adds ‘Shopping’ Category, Now Supported by Sensor Tower Products

It’s hard to imagine that the App Store has managed to go more than seven years without one, but a dedicated Shopping category finally debuted on Apple's digital storefront this past Thursday, November 5. Naturally, as the leading platform for app intelligence and app store optimization, Sensor Tower now supports the new category across all of our products.

Data for the new category is already streaming in, and you can start exploring download and revenue estimates for it using the Store Summary component of our Store Intelligence platform. The Shopping category is available as an option from within our products wherever the ability to define a specific category or categories is offered. You can also now break out the Shopping category within our Top Charts & Leaders product.

If you're an app publisher or marketer with a title or competitors in the Shopping category—or are looking to make an entrance there—you can begin tracking this new competitive landscape immediately within our platform.

Brands large and small have already made the transition from the Lifestyle category to Shopping, with the leaders in this new category starting to come into focus with Amazon, Groupon, Ibotta, Wish, and Cartwheel by Target occupying the top five free spots as of this writing.

Note that per Apple guidelines, publishers are able to define a primary App Store category (required) and also a secondary category, which is optional, for their apps. This way, an app can conceivably be categorized as both Shopping and Lifestyle, for example.

As more data is gathered, a clearer picture of the category's trends, top apps, and top publishers will emerge—and you can expect analysis & insights related to the new category here on the Sensor Tower Blog.