4 Crucial Elements for Analyzing Mobile App Competitors

To maintain a competitive edge, ensure you assess these four critical factors during your next competitor analysis.

Release Time : 2025-01-09

Last updated : 2025-06-13

4 Crucial Elements for Analyzing Mobile App Competitors

The mobile app industry continues to expand annually, making it crucial for app developers, marketers, and publishers to stay informed about their competition.

Lagging behind rivals can jeopardize the success of your mobile app projects.

To maintain a competitive edge, ensure you assess these four critical factors during your next competitor analysis.

Step 1: Identifying Your Competitor Apps

The initial step in conducting a competitor analysis for mobile apps is to identify your competitors.

These are apps that:

Belong to the same niche or category as your app.
Target a similar audience.
Offer similar features or functionalities.
Appear in app store search results for relevant keywords.

If you're unsure where to begin, consider using the FoxData to help find your competitors. Here's 3 methods that you can proceed:

Utilize FoxData for Recommendations

FoxData analyzes your app and uses AI to suggest suitable competitor apps to track.

You can directly find and add your competitors by clicking the "+ Add Competitors" option located at the top left corner in features like "Category Ranking", "Rating & Reviews", "Competitor", "ASO Keywords", "Estimated Downloads", "Estimated Revenue", "ASO Report", and "ASO Impact Analysis".

Conduct Live Search for Relevant Keywords

Perform live searches for relevant keywords using FoxData's "search" feature. For example, if your app is related to flight bookings, search for the keyword "flight" to see competing apps.

If you have more detailed competitor targeting, you can use the "Advanced Search" at the top to filter your competitors with more specific criteria.

Examine Top Chart Rankings

Explore the "top charts" to discover additional competitor apps with your category or your tag, which can provide further insights for your analysis.

For each competitor identified, add them to your tracking list within FoxData. This step is crucial for advancing your competitor analysis.

Step 2: Analyzing App Store Category Rankings for Competitor Insights

After tracking all your competitors, it's crucial to evaluate how your app stacks up in the app store category rankings.

These rankings provide valuable insights into the dominant players and emerging entrants in the market. To kickstart your competitor analysis, focus on examining the leading apps within your industry and your primary competitors.

For instance, consider the category rankings for Short Video apps in the US Google Play. Reelshort consistently maintains its position as the top short video app, indicating its strong market presence.

This data suggests that the travel app category is relatively stable and challenging to disrupt, as significant shifts in rankings are rare and have remained consistent.

Step 3: Evaluating Competitors' App Store Rankings

A crucial element of competitor analysis for mobile apps involves examining app store rankings. Understanding which keywords your competitors rank in the top 10 for can provide significant insights.

Apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store are ranked based on various factors, with keywords being a primary determinant. By identifying the top keywords for which your competitors rank highly, you can compile a list of relevant keywords to bolster your own ASO strategy.

Additionally, understanding your competitors' top-ranked keywords helps you become familiar with the language and terms users employ when searching for apps similar to yours.

Tools like FoxData can reveal the top-ranked keywords for both your app and your competitors'. To utilize this feature, navigate to the Keywords Ranked section, select the app you wish to analyze, and ensure you add pertinent keywords to your tracking list.

Afterward, compare your keyword rankings with those of your competitors. This comparison helps identify keywords with growth potential and those that may need to be discarded.

👏 Expert Tips: It's important to note that using obvious competitor app names as keywords in your app store listing is discouraged by both Apple and Google. Such practices could lead to your app update being rejected. Instead, focus on using generic, relevant keywords in your app store listings.

Step 4: Discovering Competitor Apps' Strengths and Weaknesses

Conducting a competitor analysis is an effective method to uncover the strengths and weaknesses of competing apps. There are two primary approaches to achieve this:

Overview of Global Comparisons

By examing and analyzing the global comparisions of your competitor apps with "Global Overview-Competitors", you can identify their main strengths and weakness of their app performance.

Then you can conduct targeted in-depth research on both their strong and weak performance areas, and optimize for localization across different country markets.

💡If you want to learn more about the "Global Overview-Competitors" feature, feel free to check out this guide: How to Discover New Market Opportunities With "Global Overview-Competitor"

Review User Feedback

Reading user reviews provides insights into what users appreciate and dislike about the app.

Pay attention to any suggestions for improvements, as these can be valuable for shaping your app development roadmap.

FoxData-AI Review Summary provides you with a Smart Review Summary featuring categories like "Positive", "Negative", "Bug", and "Requirements".

You can directly understand the genuine thoughts and needs of users regarding your competitors. Optimizing your product based on these user demands will help enhance the user experience of your competitor’s users.

If you're not sure how to use this feature effectively, just click on "How does it work?" at the top left of the feature page to view the guide.

👉 Or click here to check it out.

If you want to explore more competitor analysis strategies, consider trying out our "Competitor" feature.

This tool offers a comprehensive suite of competitor analysis functionalities, seamlessly integrated to streamline your research process.

💡 Read More: How to Conduct Competitor Anlysis Efficiently With "App-Competitor" Feature

Just register on FoxData to access these data and study the changes in market trends.

Now just join FoxData and embark on a journey of business growth as we unveil a FREE App Data Analytics Tool, which boosts your downloads, increases your user base, and watches your performance soar to new heights!

Natalie Petrova

Product Manager

Natalie Petrova is the Product Manager at FoxData, dedicated to presenting the best data tool.

She spends her free time walking, reading, and bouldering.

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