Covid-19 Fuels Massive Surge in Mobile App Downloads
Date: 12/15/2020
Mobile usage has seen a massive surge during the Covid-19 pandemic. Driven by “new normal” concepts of lockdowns, home-quarantine, work-from-home, and social distancing, mobile apps usage not only witnessed boom in the last few months. Continue reading if you are curious about the trajectory of the booming mobile apps market during the Wuhan virus pandemic.
Big Dollar Spend on Mobile App
A report from App Annie found that during Q3, globally 33 billion new mobile app were downloaded. The dollar spent on these mobile apps amounts to a record $28 billion – a high of 20% year-over-year.
Another startling statistic here is the time consumers spent on the downloaded mobile apps – collectively, each month of July, August, and September, accounted for in excess of 180 billion hours of mobile usage time – this is a year-over-year increase of 25%.
In fact, as per App Annie – “The coronavirus has advanced mobile usage by 2 to 3 years — accelerating our transition to a mobile-first world.”
Google Play downloads grew 10% year-over-year, accounting for 25 billion of the total 33 billion new downloads in the quarter, while iOS accounted for nearly 9 billion downloads — up 20% year-over-year. Non-gaming apps on Google Play were 55% of those downloads, while on iOS the figure was a slightly higher 70%.
Big Mobile App Markets
Top markets by downloads included India and Brazil on Google Play, while on iOS, the top two continued to be the US and China. India, Brazil, and Mexico drove growth on Google Play, while the growth drivers on iOS were India and South Korea.
Big Mobile App Markets
While mobile app download surge for iOS was primarily from consumers within the U.S and Chinese markets, for Google Play, the top markets were India and Brazil. However, when it comes to growth drivers, for Google Play the primary markets were India, Brazil, and Mexico. For iOS, the primary growth drivers were South Korea as well as India.
Some of the necessary changes imposed during the pandemic such as online classes also helped in spurring mobile app downloads. A prime example of this is in the education space where students had to adapt to remote learning to keep up with their academics. This in turn drove downloads of education apps and apps for Libraries as well as Demo apps.
A number of US consumers started looking for outdoor activities and destinations amid the lockdown which drove the download and usage of travelling and navigation apps as well as weather apps.
Top Mobile Apps Downloads during Covid-19 Pandemic
The list of mobile apps that experienced the highest number of downloads and usage on Google Play was dominated by gaming apps, entertainment apps, and tools. Photo and video as well as entertainment took the top spot on the iOS platform – the apps in fact have bagged the top spots on the list of most downloaded and used apps for five consecutive quarters.
Top 3 Most Downloaded Apps across the Globe include the following:
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TikTok.
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Facebook.
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WhatsApp messenger.
Top 3 Apps with the Highest Consumer Spend include the following:
Top 3 Apps with the Highest Monthly Active Users include the following:
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Facebook.
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WhatsApp Messenger.
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Facebook Messenger.
In Conclusion
While markets and economies are slowly opening up (though not in all places because of corruption), the usage of mobile apps have not seen a drop. In fact, there is every indication that the trend is still continuing and going strong with record increase in mobile app downloads and usage across global markets.
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