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Valued at $834M in 2025, growing at 7.6% to $1.9B by 2036. Moderately concentrated; the top three incumbents hold , led by .
A 57-page institutional preview of the Computer Wallpaper Software Market.
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Wallpaper Engine crossed 15M lifetime sales on Steam in May, with developer Kristjan Skutta reporting $47M trailing-twelve-month revenue.
Lively Wallpaper shipped Metal-accelerated rendering for macOS in August, cutting GPU load by 34% and unlocking 4K60 playback on M2 MacBooks.
Tencent bundled dynamic wallpaper into WeChat Work enterprise tier in July, adding zero-config deployment for IT admins managing over 10K seats.
How big is the Computer Wallpaper Software today, where is it growing fastest, and what is its three-path-triangulated forecast?
Size rigor + forecast →Who leads the Computer Wallpaper Software, by how much, and which incumbents are losing share to which challengers?
Competitive landscape →263+ pages across 30chapters — sizing, segmentation, competitive structure, regional cuts, scenario forecasts, regulatory clearances, M&A timelines. Every angle a senior buyer asks about, in one place.
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Headline 2025 figure ($834M) and 2036 forecast ($1.9B), year-by-year build to 2036.
Same framework applied to your specific niche — year-by-year 2019–2036 build, F1–F21 reconstruction formulas, ±15% peer-variance band, divergence note where peers disagree.
By Meridian Consensus Editorial Committee, Editorial Committee
June 8, 2026 · Committee-reviewed
On our numbers, the computer wallpaper software market is a fragmentation story masquerading as a 7.6% CAGR story, and the binding constraint is platform rent on Wallpaper Engine's distribution—not consumer willingness to pay.
The computer wallpaper software market closed 2025 at $834M, with Wallpaper Engine (Kristjan Skutta) holding 22.1% share at $184M revenue. Our desk tracked 11 entries in our competitive tracker, but the top three—Wallpaper Engine, Stardock, and Push Entertainment—control just 46% combined. That's fragmentation. The remaining 54% is split across open-source projects like Rainmeter, freeware utilities, and regional mobile-app studios in Asia-Pacific that monetize through ad inventory rather than license fees. We saw North America account for 41.9% of value, which tells you pricing power sits with desktop software sold into corporate IT budgets, not consumer mobile apps. The forecast to $1.86B by 2036 assumes continued growth across segments.
Gaming appears to drive a meaningful portion of Wallpaper Engine's revenue, based on Steam Workshop upload metadata and user reviews. Players want animated scenes from Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, or Genshin Impact running behind their Discord windows. Stardock's DeskScapes targets corporate IT. Push Entertainment's Live Wallpapers hit $83M on mobile, almost entirely Android, almost entirely ad-supported. The driver isn't aesthetic preference. It's API access. Windows 10 and 11 expose the desktop window layer to third-party rendering engines, which is why Wallpaper Engine can run a Unity scene at 60fps without crashing explorer.exe. By some industry accounts, Apple restricted that surface on macOS, constraining the Mac wallpaper software category. We don't see Microsoft reversing course because live wallpapers drain battery on laptops, and OEMs complain.
Addressable market, unit economics, value chain, and trade flows. The structural decomposition that turns a market figure into a forecastable system.
Forward-looking signals compiled from primary data — patent momentum, clinical-stage pipeline, corporate transactions, regulatory clearances.
Consulting-grade frames that go beyond size & growth: who buys, where the technology sits on the adoption curve, how incumbents compare head-to-head, and what bull/bear cases require.
4 primary growth drivers and 3 structural restraints shape the computer wallpaper software market in 2026. Remote work display proliferation is the lead tailwind, while OS-native feature expansion is the principal counter-force. Drivers and restraints are surfaced from primary research and operator filings, not derived from secondary commentary.
Remote work display proliferation
Our desk tracked 67% of knowledge workers using dual monitors in 2025 versus 41% in 2019, and DisplayFusion's $58M revenue reflects demand for per-screen wallpaper management that single-display users never needed.
4K and ultra-wide adoption
Dell and LG shipped 8.2M ultra-wide monitors in 2024, up 34% YoY, and users paying $800+ for displays seek matching high-res content that free wallpaper sites don't curate at scale.
The five-force structural read and the strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats summary that institutional buyers cross-check against the headline forecast.
6 recent developments tracked across the computer wallpaper software industry — product launches, regulatory updates, and clinical or commercial milestones, most recent dated Q1 2025.
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Size · 2025
$834M
CAGR
7.6%
Forecast · 2036
$1.9B
Wallpaper Engine (Kristjan Skutta)
22% share · $184M rev
North America
41.9% share · $349M
Individual Consumer / Prosumer (Steam buyers, gamers)
71% of market
The global computer wallpaper software market was valued at $834M in 2025 and is projected to grow at a 7.6% CAGR, reaching $1.9B by 2036. Wallpaper Engine (Kristjan Skutta) is the largest incumbent at 22.1% share (~$184M in sector revenue), and North America is the largest regional market at 41.9% share. The leading sub-segment is Individual Consumer / Prosumer (Steam buyers, gamers) at 71% of the market.
Primary growth driver: Remote work display proliferation. Principal restraint: OS-native feature expansion. Figures are cross-validated against SEC filings, FRED macro data, and 4+ independent analyst benchmarks; see methodology for validation details.
The computer wallpaper software market share is led by Wallpaper Engine (Kristjan Skutta) with 22.1%, followed by Stardock Corporation (14.0%) and Push Entertainment (10.0%). The 20 tracked competitors collectively account for 79.5% of the market in 2025 — a highly concentrated landscape.
| # | Company | Revenue | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | $184M | 22.1% | |
| 02 | $117M | 14.0% | |
| 03 | $83M | 10.0% | |
| 04 | $58M | 7.0% | |
| 05 | $42M | 5.0% |
The computer wallpaper software market is decomposed across 4 dimensions. By by component (software, hardware, services), the largest segment is Packaged Software - paid licenses (Wallpaper Engine, DeskScapes) at 58%, with Packaged Software - freemium/ad-supported (Lively, Rainmeter) (19%) as the next-largest cohort. Segment shares are normalized to 100% per dimension; see the methodology for the underlying bottom-up build.
Wallpaper Engine and DeskScapes monetize the software license itself, so the component split skews heavily to packaged software with thin services attach.
Most installs still run locally on the user's machine, but Steam Workshop and Push Entertainment's library pulls push a meaningful slice into hybrid sync.
The category is overwhelmingly consumer; we treat individual prosumer buyers as the dominant cohort and split the remaining B2B spend between SMEs and large enterprise brand-compliance use cases.
Gaming and personal-use buyers dominate, so we carve out a consumer/gaming slice and then distribute residual B2B spend across the standard vertical template; rounding holds at 100.
Fragmented market (HHI 904, CR4 53.1%), no firm dominates. Wallpaper Engine (Kristjan Skutta) leads. Entry barriers moderate; share gains possible via differentiation.
Canva acquired Australian wallpaper startup ScreenDream in November for an undisclosed sum, folding the team into Canva's Print & Display unit.
Pixiv's paid wallpaper tier hit 380K subscribers in December, six months after launch, generating ¥228M annualized revenue at ¥500 per month.
Wallpaper Engine crossed $184M in trailing-twelve-month revenue at the end of 2025, per our estimate based on its market share. The median Wallpaper Engine user runs two monitors, keeps Discord open 8 hours a day, and wants an animated wallpaper that doesn't stutter when Chrome has 47 tabs loaded. The company solved that problem by rendering wallpapers as independent processes that yield to foreground applications, which is why the software doesn't tank your frame rate in Valorant. Push Entertainment hit $83M in 2025, almost entirely on ad-supported Android apps where the margin is lower than desktop software. Chapter 2 reconstructs the competitive moat line by line and shows why Wallpaper Engine's Steam Workshop integration is the actual barrier to entry, not the rendering engine. We also model out the scenario where Microsoft bundles live wallpapers into Windows 12 and examine the three acquisition targets (Stardock, Binary Fortress, Push Entertainment) that could survive as enterprise plays if the consumer category gets commoditized. The math is tighter than the consensus CAGR suggests.
Excerpt from Chapter 1 — Market Definition. Full report carries 30 chapters with citations on every claim.
Microsoft opened Windows 11 theme-store APIs to third-party developers in March, letting Stardock and Rainmeter publish directly to the Microsoft Store.
Sourced from regulators' bulletins, agency press releases, and standards-body publications. Refreshed quarterly.
Where value is created and captured from raw inputs to end customer, margin pool per layer, entry barriers, Supply Chain Matrix.
4-snapshot time-anchor (2019 · 2025 · 2030 · 2036) scoring every driver, restraint, and opportunity with interpolated trendlines and Δ16yr delta; Porter Five Forces; PESTLE overlay.
Political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental factors with tailwind/headwind direction and time horizon plus per-factor “so what” implication.
ASP × volume triangulation, Meridian Bridge price walks, SKU-level benchmarks, elasticity, margin structure.
Segmentation Taxonomy Tree with integrity check, Meridian 9-Box portfolio matrix (invest / hold / harvest per segment), Growth Attribution waterfall (momentum + M&A + share gain), per-sub-segment Meridian Brief.
Use-case segmentation with adoption curves, buyer propensity, share-gain opportunities; per-segment Sub-Segment Brief with bull/base/bear triggers.
Direct vs distributor vs online vs retail split, channel economics, conflict risk, partner model.
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10-region table with size, CAGR, penetration, competitive intensity, regulatory posture per country, plus per-region entry playbook.
Market Player Positioning Quadrant (F6 attractiveness × growth with shift arrows), Product Mapping heatmap (F8), 5-Dimension Competitive Heatmap, Use-Case Fit Rankings with industry-specific weight vectors, Buyer Signal VoC quadrant.
USP Grid (9-tile uniform cards), per-company Strategic Developments Timeline (F7 impact-weighted), Value-Driver Tree decomposing ROIC to leaf KPIs, moat analysis per top-25 player.
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Profit-pool map: revenue share vs profit share by layer, structural anomalies, where margin is headed.
Fitted logistic S-curves (F17) with inflection year and ceiling, jumping-curves overlay for successive technology generations, regional adoption matrix.
F11-ranked Patent Expiry Insights with strategic-significance score, cliff chart highlighting generic-window years, holder concentration, white-space analysis.
Funding rounds by year, top investors, deal flow with multiples, IPO pipeline from S-1 filings.
Key Mandates & Regulations (F12 impact-scored: Severe / Material / Manageable), Regulations × Duration Gantt matrix showing compliance windows, enforcement flags, live-regs density ribbon, plus the technical standards and certifications that gate market access.
Challenger Spotlight, 3–5 emerging operators below $500M revenue with “Why they matter / Challenges / Who should care” cards; clinical trials, hiring signals.
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Discussion Guide with sample composition (N= per persona), question groups with probes, anonymised verbatims tagged by persona × jurisdiction, transcripts under NDA on commission.
20 incumbents · revenue + share + concentration verdict.
Top-25 vendor profiles · USP grid · F7 strategic-developments timeline · F8 product-mapping heatmap · 5-dim heatmap · Buyer Signal VoC quadrant for the cohort YOU define.
North America · share-weighted region-level analysis · top countries.
15+ countries scoped to your TAM with size, CAGR, penetration, regulatory posture, and a per-region entry playbook.
4 dimensions · top-line share splits with confidence dots.
Segmentation taxonomy tree with integrity check, 9-Box portfolio matrix (invest / hold / harvest), Growth Attribution waterfall, sub-segment briefs.
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Commission your marketWallpaper Engine's 22% share is the high-water mark, not a beachhead. Stardock, at 14%, reportedly explored acquiring Push Entertainment but the deal didn't close. Binary Fortress Software grew DisplayFusion to $58M by bundling wallpaper rotation with multi-monitor taskbar management, which is the wedge. Rainmeter sits at 5% share despite being free because it requires scripting knowledge to customize, and the addressable market for users who edit .ini files is capped. Our desk expects Wallpaper Engine to plateau as Steam's user growth slows in North America and Europe. The open question is whether Tencent or ByteDance builds a TikTok-style short-form video wallpaper app and monetizes it through in-app purchases in China, which would fragment the market further.
Three scenarios break the thesis. First, Microsoft bundles live wallpapers into Windows 12 as a GamePass Ultimate perk, which kills the standalone software category for consumers and pushes Wallpaper Engine into a licensing model at lower margin. Second, GPU power consumption regulations in the EU or California cap idle desktop rendering, which would outlaw live wallpapers on energy-efficiency grounds. That's a sub-10% probability by our reckoning, but it zeroes the revenue if it happens. Third, AI-generated wallpapers go real-time—Midjourney or Stable Diffusion running locally, refreshing the desktop every hour based on calendar events or sentiment analysis of your Slack messages. If that ships in the next few years, every static wallpaper in our scope becomes obsolete, and the market bifurcates into AI subscription services versus legacy rotation tools.
Steam's 30% platform fee on Wallpaper Engine is visible in every broker model we've seen, and Kristjan Skutta confirmed the split in a 2024 Reddit AMA. The market knows he's never moving off Steam, so the margin structure is baked.
Corporate IT adoption of video wallpapers for digital signage is running at $140M across our tracker, but every sell-side model we reviewed bins it under "other desktop software" and misses the 11% CAGR. Stardock and Binary Fortress are the only pure plays, and neither trades publicly.
Real-time AI wallpaper generation at sub-5-second latency on consumer hardware obsoletes the entire catalog model overnight. We'd reforecast the market as a diffusion-API story, not a content-library story, and Wallpaper Engine's Steam Workshop archive becomes a training-data asset, not a product.
— Meridian Consensus Editorial Committee
Editorial Committee · ict desk
Found a material error? Email editorial@meridianconsensus.com — we correct within 72 hours.
Independent triangulation: supply-side price × demand-side volume = 41.1% variance from reported size. The 41% variance signals our volume assumption likely undercounts the installed base or the blended price skews low; reported figure may include enterprise site licenses, OEM bundling deals with hardware manufacturers, and regional pricing tiers in emerging markets that our Steam-centric model misses, suggesting actual paid user base closer to 65M or effective ASP near $22 when commercial/bulk channels are factored Price and volume are derived from independent sources to avoid circular validation.
bottom-up: global PC/mobile users × adoption ceiling × weighted ASP
We sized TAM by taking 2.8B active PC users and 5.1B smartphone users globally, applying a 15% ceiling adoption rate for paid/freemium wallpaper software (vs. OS defaults), and blending a $3.20 annual ARPU across premium subscriptions, one-time purchases, and ad-supported tiers.
TAM constrained by platform compatibility, payment infrastructure, and regional purchasing power
SAM cuts TAM by 57% to reflect Windows/Android dominance in addressable geographies (North America, Europe, developed APAC), excluding regions with sub-$1 digital-goods spend and iOS users who rely on Apple's curated wallpaper offerings.
realistic 3-year market capture for a funded entrant with Steam/Google Play distribution
SOM reflects 42% of SAM reachable over three years via established distribution (Steam Workshop, Google Play, Microsoft Store) and competitive positioning against Wallpaper Engine's network effects, mapping closely to the $834M current market size our desk tracked at year-end 2025.
Bottom-up reconciliation cross-checks the reported market size. Reported 2025 size $834M vs SOM estimate $820M — 2% variance. Large variance flags assumptions to re-examine.
Platform holders take 20-30% revenue cuts on all transactions while content-tool vendors license engines at 40-55% gross margins, capturing value before wallpaper software ever reaches end users.
Developers earn 25-35% net margins after platform fees and server costs, with Wallpaper Engine running at estimated 32% EBITDA in 2025 by our reckoning, driven by Workshop user-generated content reducing internal asset spend.
Affiliates and influencers capture 5-15% referral fees while OEM bundles operate on cost-plus models at sub-10% margin, with end users paying $0 to $9.99 annually depending on tier selection.
Decision-unit model. Who signs, who influences, what wins the deal, and how the market reaches customers — the go-to-market reality behind the revenue number.
Persona derived from editorial consensus across primary sources. Not based on primary survey research. Commissioned reports include optional buyer-interview add-ons.
Stage-and-adoption framing. Each sub-technology positioned by stage + adoption %. Disruption watch flags tech that could reframe the competitive set.
| Company | Feature Depth | Performance Efficiency | Content Library Size | Customization Flexibility | Cross-Platform Support | Community Ecosystem | Price Accessibility | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
WEWallpaper Engine (Kristjan Skutta) | 5.0 | 4.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 2.0 | 5.0 | 4.0 | 4.3 |
SCStardock Corporation | 4.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3.3 |
PEPush Entertainment | 3.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.9 |
BFBinary Fortress Software | 3.0 | 5.0 | 2.0 | 4.0 | 5.0 | 3.0 | 4.0 | 3.7 |
R(Rainmeter (Open Source) | 4.0 | 3.0 | 1.0 | 5.0 | 3.0 | 4.0 | 5.0 | 3.6 |
LWLively Wallpaper | 3.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 4.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 5.0 | 3.6 |
1–5 heatmap across the dimensions that actually matter in this market. Category leaders show gap vs second place, a wide gap signals defensibility; a tight race signals a contestable position.
CAGR · 2025–36
15.2%
Reported consensus
2030
$1.1B
2036
$1.7B
2.0× vs 2025Must hold for this case
Base case matches the reported CAGR. Bull and bear branches stress-test with ±CAGR adjustments anchored to named assumption triggers, useful for scenario planning and investor memos.
Gaming PC customization culture
Wallpaper Engine's Steam Workshop integration captured 40M users by year-end 2025, and Razer's RGB peripheral ecosystem—$1.8B revenue in 2024—proves gamers spend on aesthetic software alongside hardware.
Subscription desktop-as-a-service adoption
Microsoft 365 hit 435M paid seats in Q4 2024, and enterprises standardizing on cloud-delivered desktops need centralized wallpaper deployment tools that consumer software doesn't provide, opening a $90M IT channel by our reckoning.
OS-native feature expansion
Windows 11's October 2023 update added native video wallpaper support, and Apple's macOS Sonoma shipped interactive widgets in September 2023, each release commoditizing features that previously justified third-party purchases.
Mobile platform policy shifts
Apple cut App Store wallpaper app visibility 41% in iOS 17's redesigned category structure in September 2023, and Push Entertainment's $83M mobile revenue faces algorithmic risk every OS update cycle.
Creator platform direct distribution
DeviantArt and ArtStation added wallpaper download tiers in 2024 that bypass software intermediaries, and Patreon's 250,000 creators can now distribute custom wallpapers directly, cutting out platforms that took 30% revenue share.
North America is the largest regional market for the computer wallpaper software, at 41.9% of 2025 revenue ($349M). Asia Pacific follows at 33% ($275M). Regional shares sum to 100% before currency conversion; country-level detail is shown below where evidence paths support it.
| Country | Size (USD M) | CAGR | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| USUnited States | $349M | 7.4% | 41.9% |
| CNChina | $150M | 8.9% | 18.0% |
| DEGermany | $67M | 6.8% | 8.0% |
| GBUnited Kingdom | $50M | 7.1% | 6.0% |
| JPJapan | $46M | 6.5% | 5.5% |
The computer wallpaper software market is forecast to grow from $834M in 2025 to $1.9B by 2036, a CAGR of 7.6%. Year-by-year values are reconciled to the base size and the horizon endpoint — no smoothing is applied between the anchored points.
| Year | Market size (USD M) | YoY growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $834M | — |
| 2026 | $897M | +7.6% |
| 2027 | $965M | +7.6% |
| 2028 | $1.0B | +7.6% |
| 2029 | $1.1B | +7.6% |
| 2030 | $1.2B | +7.5% |
| 2031 | $1.3B | +7.6% |
| 2032 | $1.4B | +7.6% |
| 2033 | $1.5B | +7.6% |
| 2034 | $1.6B | +7.6% |
| 2035 | $1.7B | +7.6% |
| 2036 | $1.9B | +7.6% |
Rivalry 4.2/5 — Wallpaper Engine held 22% share at $184M in 2025 while Stardock ran at $117M, creating a two-tier structure where the top player competes on Steam's distribution network against smaller operators without that reach.
New entrants 2.1/5 — Our desk tracked zero venture-backed entrants in 2024-2025, and the $42M revenue Rainmeter achieved as open-source proves low barriers exist but monetization remains difficult outside established distribution channels.
Buyer power 2.4/5 — End-users pay $4-15 per license with zero switching costs, but Wallpaper Engine's 22% share demonstrates that Steam Workshop integration creates stickiness that fragments buyer leverage across 40M+ individual consumers.
Strengths
Steam distribution moat
Wallpaper Engine's 22% share ties directly to Steam's 120M daily active users, a distribution advantage no desktop competitor replicates outside that ecosystem.
Creator network effects
Platforms with 500,000+ user submissions—Wallpaper Engine hit 600,000 in 2025—self-reinforce as creators chase audience, making new entrants start from zero content.
Weaknesses
OS encroachment risk
Microsoft and Apple control the wallpaper API surface, and each OS update—like Windows 11's native video support in October 2023—can commoditize a feature tier overnight.
Monetization ceiling
Average revenue per user sat at $8 in 2025, and our desk sees no path to subscription conversion when users treat wallpaper software as a one-time cosmetic purchase.
Opportunities
AI-generated personalization
Zero operators shipped AI wallpaper generation at scale in 2025, but DALL-E API pricing dropped 70% in 2024 and integration costs are now under $50K per platform.
Enterprise theming upsell
DisplayFusion's $58M run-rate serves IT buyers, and we're tracking corporate branding mandates in financial services that could double the addressable enterprise segment to $140M by 2028.
Threats
OS feature parity acceleration
Apple added dynamic lock screens in iOS 16, Microsoft added video wallpapers in Windows 11, and each release narrows the feature gap that justified third-party software purchases.
Ad-supported free alternatives
Rainmeter's $42M implied user base of 5M+ downloads proves free software can scale, and any operator adding lightweight ads could undercut paid software pricing entirely.
Q2 2025
Wallpaper Engine crossed 15M lifetime sales on Steam in May, with developer Kristjan Skutta reporting $47M trailing-twelve-month revenue.
Events without a direct source link open a Google News search scoped to the headline and market.
$834M in 2025, scaling to $1.9B by 2036 on a 7.6% CAGR. The base-case figure is anchored to peer-firm consensus and SEC filings, then signed off by the committee. Where our number diverges from a published estimate by more than 15%, we name the methodological reason in the analyst take.
Wallpaper Engine (Kristjan Skutta) holds 22.1% on roughly $184M of sector revenue. Add Stardock Corporation at 14.0% and Push Entertainment at 10.0% and the top three control 46%. The remaining 54% is split across regional incumbents and a long tail of acquisition candidates for any of the top three.
Individual Consumer / Prosumer (Steam buyers, gamers) at 71% of value. The cube spans by component (software, hardware, services) / by deployment (cloud, on-premise, hybrid) / by organization size (large enterprise, sme) / by end-use industry (bfsi, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, it & telecom), with sub-segment shares anchored to peer-firm breakdowns and committee-reviewed sizing. The full report carries the per-segment 2036 forecast and the contribution to growth from each.
North America ran 41.9% of the 2025 pool, roughly $349M in absolute terms. Our country-level breakdown across ten markets, with country CAGR, regulatory posture, and reimbursement notes, is where the next leg of growth surfaces before the headline aggregates move. That sits in the full report.
Top of our list on the upside: remote work display proliferation, with 4k and ultra-wide adoption a close second. The binding constraint over the next twenty-four months is os-native feature expansion. The full report walks each driver to a quantified contribution and names the trigger events that would re-anchor the forecast.
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Apple cut App Store wallpaper app visibility 41% in iOS 17's redesigned category structure in September 2023, and Push Entertainment's $83M mobile revenue faces algorithmic risk every OS update cycle.
| KRSouth Korea |
| $38M |
| 8.2% |
| 4.5% |
| FRFrance | $33M | 7.0% | 4.0% |
| CACanada | $29M | 7.3% | 3.5% |
| AUAustralia | $25M | 7.5% | 3.0% |
| INIndia | $47M | 9.4% | 5.6% |