INDIA EMERGED AS WORLD’S FOURTH LARGEST MOBILE APP ECONOMY

“There is an app for that” this phrase has become popular for a simple reason …it is THE TRUTH – there is a mobile app for everything!

However, we Indians don’t go overboard when it comes to installing apps on our smartphones (there are exceptions though). We Indian consumers although are reserved for app downloads, still an average Indian user installs no more than 32 apps in smartphones. While only 26% users have Hindi language apps.

With the introduction of affordable smartphones and better infrastructure supporting mobile, has led to rapid increase in the number of Indians owning smartphones along with rising number of mobile internet users. Resultantly, India has emerged as world’s fourth largest mobile app economy.

“Along with the increase in these numbers, the amount of time Indians spend on applications is also increasing” says App Annie, a mobile-app analytics company.

APP MARKET IN INDIA: EXPLOSIVE GROWTH

The annual figure for India is expected to grow by 92%, which will amount to 9 billion downloads this year and by 2020, this figure will rise to 20.1 billion.

As compared the app download in China is expected to grow at slow pace as approximately 29% in 2017. However, China’s absolute figure will be more than six times of India’s figure.

RETAIL APPS, VIDEO STREAMING APPS, RIDE-SHARING APP WILL CONTINUE TO GROW

People have this perception in India that users spend more time on browsers. That is not true. Research reveals the percentage of time spent on apps in India is the same as around the world, at 93% (the remaining 7% comes from mobile browsers).

WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and UC Browser were the top apps of 2015 whereas Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon and Paytm remain the most popular e-commerce apps.

Incidentally, among the top 6 apps, 4 apps are owned by Facebook, with this, they are still dominating right now the mobile apps space.

17% of all daily app downloads continue to be games – with car racing and action games being the most popular. Over a decade, India has emerged as Asia’s fastest-growing mobile gaming market with revenues expected to exceed 1 billion by 2018.

Talking about the ride-sharing apps, Ola is the most downloaded and used the app after Uber. The retail, e-tailing firms, with mobile-first approach, seemed to be ahead of everyone quite an irony to mature markets where web-first and brick-and-mortar players still have a huge share. India has seen a major rise in the time spent on retails apps. Precisely speaking, the amount of time spent on mobile grew by 11.5 in the first quarter of this year as compared to that of 2014.

“Close to 75% of the top 10 mobile retail apps in India in both iOS and Google Play store have a mobile-first approach. In the US and UK, this number is only 10%,” Yu said.

Flipkart was ahead of Amazon in India, in terms of monthly active Android users in Quarter 1 of 2016. Whereas, Amazon was above Flipkart for the same period, in terms of app downloads in both iOS and Google app store.

Asia Pacific with more than 50% of total global app downloads is regarded as the biggest region in the global app economy.

Along with India being the world’s second largest user of applications, it stands a chance to arise as the largest developer base.

Discussing the opportunities and growth prospects because of the growth in app markets, A. Robert Jerad Ravi, Advisor (Quality of Service), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) says at ‘Digital Services Asia 2016’,“Majority of apps which are based out of other countries are developed by Indians, either working out of India or stationed abroad. This process in itself is a business opportunity, which should be encouraged by the Government.”

MALE DOMINANCE / AGE

As per statistics, male dominate app downloads, with a slight margin over 20% of all mobile internet users being females in India. It further states that even in near future, males will continue dominating app downloads by a very large margin.

As far as the age of app users go, below 25-age category dominates with over 66% users being in that category.