[Android Apps and Games] Skyica:
The problems with the country-specific ratings on Google Play and App Finder's solution

Note: This is an updated, improved, and extended version of a prvious post that was based on data for 2.4 million apps.

Since some time, Google Play shows country-average user ratings in most larger countries.

While these have obvious advantages over the world-average, they also have the disadvantage of being based on the opinion of fewer people, or not being available at all for apps with too few ratings from the user's country.

The following table compares the number of apps with country-average ("local") ratings to the number of apps with world-average ("global") ratings, for all countries where Google Play shows local ratings.

It is based on data for about 3.7 million apps and 181 countries/regions that we have scraped over the last few weeks from the Google Play website. Note that 42matters reports 3.69 million apps on Google Play (and AppBrain reports only 2.59 million), so that our data seem to be quite comprehensive.

Country​

Apps available​

Apps with global rating​

Apps with local rating​

Ratio​

India	3,022,000	1,356,000	490,000	2.77
United States	3,064,000	1,359,000	429,000	3.17
Brazil	2,992,000	1,336,000	284,000	4.7
Indonesia	2,914,000	1,317,000	247,000	5.3
Russia	2,871,000	1,297,000	216,000	6.0
Germany	2,922,000	1,317,000	195,000	6.8
United Kingdom	2,944,000	1,321,000	189,000	7.0
Turkey	2,877,000	1,301,000	171,000	7.6
Mexico	2,903,000	1,310,000	168,000	7.8
France	2,909,000	1,312,000	161,000	8.2
Pakistan	2,856,000	1,290,000	157,000	8.2
Italy	2,905,000	1,310,000	155,000	8.5
Spain	2,906,000	1,311,000	147,000	8.9
Philippines	2,875,000	1,300,000	142,000	9.1
Egypt	2,866,000	1,295,000	139,000	9.3
Argentina	2,887,000	1,305,000	133,000	9.8
Malaysia	2,883,000	1,305,000	132,000	9.9
Bangladesh	2,854,000	1,291,000	129,000	10.0
Ukraine	2,876,000	1,300,000	127,000	10.2
Thailand	2,875,000	1,301,000	127,000	10.2
Vietnam	2,871,000	1,298,000	126,000	10.3
Saudi Arabia	2,858,000	1,290,000	125,000	10.3
Canada	2,943,000	1,323,000	124,000	10.6
South Korea	2,865,000	1,288,000	117,000	11.0
Iran	2,637,000	1,173,000	103,000	11.4
Colombia	2,878,000	1,301,000	114,000	11.4
Poland	2,883,000	1,302,000	113,000	11.5
Algeria	2,840,000	1,281,000	108,000	11.8
Iraq	2,780,000	1,243,000	99,000	12.5
South Africa	2,875,000	1,300,000	102,000	12.7
Netherlands	2,889,000	1,305,000	101,000	12.9
Australia	2,907,000	1,312,000	102,000	12.9
Japan	2,905,000	1,312,000	99,000	13.3
Morocco	2,856,000	1,291,000	96,000	13.4
Romania	2,868,000	1,297,000	91,000	14.3
Nigeria	2,860,000	1,293,000	89,000	14.5
Peru	2,876,000	1,301,000	87,000	14.9
Taiwan	2,870,000	1,298,000	86,000	15.1
Kazakhstan	2,863,000	1,295,000	84,000	15.4
Chile	2,880,000	1,302,000	85,000	15.4
United Arab Emirates	2,864,000	1,293,000	83,000	15.5
Israel	2,867,000	1,296,000	80,000	16.2
Venezuela	2,867,000	1,296,000	79,000	16.5
Uzbekistan	2,859,000	1,294,000	78,000	16.7
Greece	2,871,000	1,298,000	75,000	17.4
Portugal	2,885,000	1,304,000	73,000	17.9
Czechia	2,868,000	1,297,000	72,000	18.1
Singapore	2,882,000	1,305,000	71,000	18.4
Belgium	2,885,000	1,304,000	70,000	18.7
Hungary	2,867,000	1,297,000	69,000	18.9
Azerbaijan	2,858,000	1,293,000	68,000	19.0
Ecuador	2,871,000	1,298,000	68,000	19.1
Yemen	2,842,000	1,282,000	65,000	19.6
Belarus	2,859,000	1,293,000	64,000	20.2
Austria	2,891,000	1,306,000	64,000	20.3
Myanmar	2,782,000	1,242,000	60,000	20.6
Sweden	2,883,000	1,302,000	63,000	20.6
Hong Kong	2,868,000	1,296,000	62,000	20.8
Nepal	2,861,000	1,294,000	61,000	21.4
Jordan	2,843,000	1,283,000	59,000	21.7
Kenya	2,853,000	1,289,000	59,000	21.9
Switzerland	2,899,000	1,311,000	60,000	22.0
Bulgaria	2,864,000	1,295,000	58,000	22.2
Guatemala	2,865,000	1,296,000	58,000	22.2
Serbia	2,861,000	1,292,000	57,000	22.7
Dominican Republic	2,866,000	1,296,000	57,000	22.7
Sri Lanka	2,856,000	1,292,000	57,000	22.8
Tunisia	2,847,000	1,285,000	55,000	23.2
Bolivia	2,869,000	1,297,000	55,000	23.8
Lebanon	2,855,000	1,291,000	54,000	24.0
Costa Rica	2,869,000	1,298,000	52,000	24.9
Ghana	2,852,000	1,289,000	50,000	25.8
Libya	2,738,000	1,226,000	47,000	26.0
El Salvador	2,865,000	1,296,000	48,000	27.2
New Zealand	2,884,000	1,304,000	47,000	27.6
Honduras	2,864,000	1,295,000	47,000	27.7
Uruguay	2,870,000	1,298,000	46,000	27.9
Ireland	2,888,000	1,303,000	46,000	28.3
Cambodia	2,855,000	1,292,000	44,000	29.1
Paraguay	2,866,000	1,296,000	44,000	29.2
Kyrgyzstan	2,858,000	1,293,000	44,000	29.4
Panama	2,867,000	1,296,000	42,000	30.8
Nicaragua	2,861,000	1,294,000	41,000	31.3
Norway	2,876,000	1,301,000	41,000	31.4
Oman	2,848,000	1,286,000	40,000	31.8
Georgia	2,801,000	1,254,000	36,000	34.6
Senegal	2,855,000	1,291,000	33,000	39.2
Palestine	2,686,000	1,213,000	31,000	39.5
Laos	2,857,000	1,292,000	29,000	44.3

For smaller countries, local ratings are available for only a small fraction of the apps with global ratings.

Obviously, this is a serious problem for users from smaller "local rating countries", and for developers of apps that are not very popular.

Note that Google Play shows global ratings in very small countries (e.g. Denmark, Finland, Croatia), and also in some large countries (e.g. China, Ethiopia, Congo).

Examples

The following table shows the availability of local ratings in English-speaking countries for some of the best scientific and graphing calculator apps (see my comprehensive comparative review of advanced calculator apps).

App​

# Ratings total​

United States​

United Kingdom​

Canada​

Australia​

New Zealand​

Ireland​

Hiper Calc	230,000	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
... Pro	33,000	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
GeoGebra 3D Calculator	7,300	yes	yes	yes	yes	-	-
... CAS Calculator	1,000	yes	yes	-	-	-	-
Scientific Calculator (by Philip Stephens)	5,700	yes	yes	yes	yes	-	-
... Pro	140	yes	-	-	-	-	-
ChampCalc	810	yes	yes	yes	yes	-	-
... Pro	76	yes	yes	-	-	-	-

You see that there are apps with several thousand total ratings that have no local ratings in smaller countries like New Zealand and Ireland.

For two examples, lists of all local ratings and rating distributions are shown below. App Finder can display such lists for all apps (tap the rating in the result list, Plus licence required).

You see that the local ratings in some small countries are up to more than one star less than the world average. Clearly, such cases will often be due to coincidence, and not due to a lower value of the apps to people in the respective countries.

For the benefit of both users and developers, App Finder shows global ratings for apps without local ratings, and has the option to show global ratings instad of or in addition to local ratings, and to use global ratings for filter and sort.