We will answer this question immediately and then clarify what we exactly mean by that. Due to a Covid-19 pandemic, we are using (and spending on) mobile applications 40 % more than in 2019. More precisely, the second quarter of 2020 saw the largest mobile applications use to date, globally.
Sadly, the biggest driver in the global mobile app market has been the pandemic over the past year. Consumers in the richest individual markets – those of China, the USA, Great Britain, South Korea, and Japan – contributed to the growth of financial revenue more than consumers in some other parts of the world because, during the period of quarantine, they were first to decide to download mobile programs and games and, to a large extent, those who charge for their services.
In isolation, we were all forced into the coronavirus pandemic, and we spent far more time using mobile apps than before. And that is logical considering the lockdown and various restrictions on physical movement. In the second quarter of 2020, mobile applications’ use increased by 40 % compared to 2019, as we said at the beginning of the text. Simultaneously, a world record was set for the number of hours spent in one month – in April – when the world spent 200 billion hours on applications.
Statistics of Number of Downloads and Money Spent on Apps
When it comes to money spent on application services, $ 27 billion was spent during the second quarter of 2020. In the same period, the number of downloads approached 35 billion. According to the analysis, users spend an average of about four and a half hours a day looking and surfing on their mobile devices.
Mobile game downloads for mobile devices have reached 14 billion. If we look at the applications included in other categories, they represent 55% of the total downloads on Android devices and as much as 70% on iOS. On devices running the Android operating system alone, users spent 3.5 trillion minutes last year with apps downloaded. The most commonly downloaded applications are from entertainment, in which sports betting with a huge number of mobile bookmakers falls. Other most popular categories are tools, images, and video.
According to statistical indicators from the research of the mobile industry State of Mobile, a total of 218 billion mobile applications were downloaded in the world in 2020 overall, with an increase of 7 % compared to the previous year. In addition, consumers spent as much as 20 % more money on paid content, so the revenue in this segment amounted to a record $ 143 billion.
The Most Popular Apps During a Pandemic
Now, in terms of the applications that have been the most successful, things are like this. For the number of downloads, TikTok is the most successful, followed by Zoom and Facebook. If you look at the money that users spent, TikTok makes the biggest profit, followed by Tinder and YouTube.
It is clear that the pandemic has significantly increased the use of virtual communication and social networks, so when it comes to the most active users, we have a few apps other than those mentioned earlier in the list. In the second quarter of 2020, the most active users were Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Twitter.
On the other hand, among the main trends in the requested content, there is a huge increase in demand for live TV services, equally in developed countries such as the US or Japan and emerging markets such as India or Indonesia. This trend has also spread evenly across age groups of users.
