We all know what the top 100 apps are in a particular store and a particular category, but which apps are popular around the world and across categories?

While creating App Annie, we spent quite a lot of time coming up with different ways to show rankings across categories and countries. A cool visualization we cooked up along the way is the Top 5 Matrix.

The matrix gives an idea of which apps are achieving success across national and categorical boundaries, as well as which apps from Paid or Free are also making the most money.

If you're interested in one app, you can hover over its icon to reveal other appearances of the same app in the matrix.

By default, the matrix shows the top overall ranked apps across countries, but you can change this using the filters to the left. And as always, you can look back in time using the drop-down by the date.

Check it out at http://www.appannie.com/matrix/.