Lockdown: 40% More Time In Mobile Apps Was Spent By Users

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed dramatically and rapidly, life around the world, whether work, education, or entertainment is concerned. As we continue to experience the impact of the coronavirus on key industries and markets, the trend that remains more than obvious is that people around the world are devoting more time to their mobile phones than ever before.

It is no coincidence, for example, that the average monthly time spent on mobile applications increased by 40% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020. It even reached – monthly level – an all-time record during April 2020, when the lockdown was imposed worldwide. In April, the whole planet spent more than 200 billion hours on mobile apps, an all-time record. This significant increase in usage has been fueled by social distancing measures and lockdown, which have been imposed around the world to combat the spread of the new coronavirus pandemic.

Consumers also spent a record of 27 billion dollars on apps in the second quarter of 2020. Consumer spending on iOS apps increased 15% year-on-year to 17 billion dollars and 25% year-on-year on Google Play to 10 billion dollars.

According to App Annie, consumers around the world downloaded nearly 35 billion new apps in the second quarter of 2020. Google Play downloads increased 10% year-on-year to 25 billion dollars, while downloads iOS apps grew by 20% to almost 10 billion new downloads in the second quarter of 2020 alone.

On Google Play, out-of-game apps accounted for 55% of all downloads, while on iOS the number was slightly higher at 70%.

The same figures show that on Google Play, India and Brazil were the two largest markets in terms of the number of new downloads in the second quarter of 2020. However, in terms of growth, India, Brazil, and Indonesia, were the countries where the highest growth rate of mobile application usage occurred during the period under review.

Meanwhile, on iOS, the United States and China were the two largest markets in the absolute number of mobile application downloads, while the United States and Saudi Arabia were the two fastest-growing markets.

Games and entertainment were the most dynamic categories in terms of downloads on Google Play. However, other categories, such as health, fitness, and education, also saw strong increases from quarter to quarter in downloads, at 115%, 75%, and 50% respectively.

Meanwhile, video conferencing and collaboration tools such as ZOOM Cloud Meetings and Google Meet, as well as educational tools such as Google Classroom and Duolingo, have also moved up Google Play.

In iOS, games, photography, video, and entertainment remained the biggest categories in terms of downloads, as well as video conferencing applications.

Note that the US and China were the largest markets for mobile applications in the second quarter of 2020, in terms of the iOS operating system, while the US and Japan were the driving forces of the quarterly growth in Google Play.

As far as apps are concerned let’s have a look at the top ones that were downloaded in the second quarter of 2020. The first one is TikTok which was also in the first place of the list during the first quarter of 2020. ZOOM cloud meetings come second at the list which saw an increase of about ten points, while at the third place of the list comes Facebook. WhatsApp Messenger and Instagram complete the 4^th and 5^th place of the list respectively.

Referring to consumer spending in the second quarter of 2020 the top 5 apps were TikTok, Tinder, YouTube, Tencent Video, and Disney+. Netflix, IQIYI, Google One, Bigo Live, and Pandora Music came at the 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, 9^th and 10^th place of the list respectively.

In the second quarter of 2020, Facebook had the most active users on a monthly basis. The second one was WhatsApp Messenger and the third one Facebook Messenger. The 4^th one was Instagram and 5^th Twitter. The top 10 apps with most active members on a monthly basis were completed by Amazon, TikTok, Netflix, Spotify, and Telegram.

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