Abstract
Mobile applications have become essential in daily life, influencing how people communicate, work, and entertain themselves, with millions of apps available on platforms. User feedback through ratings and reviews serves as a key measure of app success, shaping download decisions and overall user preferences. App ratings often vary across countries due to cultural, linguistic, and geographic factors, making localized insights crucial for understanding relevance and usability. Moreover, multiple determinants contribute to app popularity, underscoring the importance of conducting comprehensive cross-country analyses to better understand user engagement and satisfaction. However, despite this importance, prior studies are mostly based on limited or single-country data and lack large-scale comparative analyses across countries and app ecosystems.This study analyzes the popularity, user engagement, and rating consistency of 1521 selected mobile applications across 86 Play Store regions to provide detailed insights into global app usage and interaction patterns. The research examines total ratings, total reviews, and review-to-rating ratios to identify patterns of user engagement and satisfaction, while also assessing rating consistency and preference similarities across countries. It further examines the monetization strategies of popular apps and their influence on app popularity across various categories, while also comparing user ratings between the Play Store and App Store to reveal platform-specific dynamics and feedback variations.