It's estimated that total downloads are 60 million; app analytics company Distimo reckons the total on iOS is 36 million.
The company has been tight-lipped within respect to numbers, but the news that the free-to-play game generated $12 million in a month early post-launch, at that stage marked a new peak in terms of financial success on iOS.
Of course, titles released since - notably Hay Day, Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga - have forced us to re-evaluate the highest tier of success to multiple millions of dollars daily.
Top of the tops
Looking at the game's top grossing position on the Apple App Store, it's been the #1 top grossing app in 120 countries on iPhone, and #1 top grossing app in 121 countries on iPad.
Digging deeper, we can work out a measure of success (what I call the Success coefficient - see my article 'A Data-Driven Approach to Ranking F2P Monetisation Efficiencies' for more details).
On iPhone, CSR Racing has a ranking of 0.99 [(134/135)/1], and a ranking of 1.0 on iPad [(135/135)/1].
In these terms of measuring global success then, CSR Racing is about as perfect as you can get.
The long view
Most of these #1 chart positions were gained at launch, but the game has demonstrated surprising longevity in the charts.
The iPhone version of the game has never ranked outside the top 40 top grossing US charts, although the iPad version is now slipping down in the top 60-70 positions.
CSR Racing's top grossing performance in the US App Store on iPhone - thanks to apptrace
CSR Racing's top grossing performance in the US App Store on iPad has been comparatively lower - thanks to apptrace
Another store
The game's performance on Google Play is not quite so sparkling.
The main reason is that the Android version wasn't released until April 2013. In addition, Creative Mobile's Drag Racing status as the #1 game in this genre on Android is also likely to be a limiting factor.
On Google Play, CSR Ranking has been ranked the #1 top grossing app in 4 countries, peaking at #3 in the US.
In terms of its Success coefficient, CSR Racing ranks 0.29 [(39/45)/3] on Google Play.
Platform comparison
We can further consider the comparison between the two stores thanks to data estimated and supplied by app analytics company Distimo.
The graph below shows that during CSR Racing's first couple of weeks on the Google Play, the market generated more revenue than the Apple App Store.
Since mid-May 2013, however, iOS has been the dominate revenue-generated for NaturalMotion, presently at an approximate revenue split of 3:2.
Over the game's total lifecycle, Distimo estimates that Google Play accounts for 8.75 percent CSR Racing's revenue.
Assuming a monthly hit-rate of $12 million (a very crude assumption), this would be $12.6 million.
Distimo also reveals that South Africa is the only country in the world where CSR Racing generates more revenue from Google Play than the App Store.
On the App Store, the top five revenue-generating countries are (in declining order) US, UK, France, Germany and Australia.
On Google Play, it's US, Germany, UK, France, Australia.
Methodology:
Distimo AppIQ provides download and revenue estimations for any app worldwide, based on daily sampling of transactional app data (>3 billion downloads / quarter) and publicly available information. When calculating downloads and revenues for individual apps, Distimo's unique methodology excludes that app's transactional data from the analysis to preserve the confidentiality of their users' data.
