In a year in which many in the world had to depend on their smartphones for various reasons, mobile game and app spending grew 25% to $112 billion in 2020, according to year-end estimates from mobile data and analytics researcher App Annie. This was as expected.
And India was the top country that contributed to the growth in downloads on Google Play.
Industry experts say that due to the pandemic mobile use has sky-rocketed and accelerated the adoption of mobile by two to three years.
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The lockdown was a major source of the increase, with a 40% jump in how much time people were spending on apps, coming out to over 200 billion hours cumulatively spent on the apps in April alone. The trend was present in numerous countries hit particularly hard by the pandemic, including India with 35% growth.
It is clear that big companies, brands, and game makers have to focus on mobile in order to ensure their future growth.
"...we have all leaned on mobile to connect, work, learn, play and escape," App Annie said in the report.
India major contributor for downloads on Google Play Store
Both iOS and Android saw good growth in the year.
As per App Annie estimates, mobile app and game downloads are set to hit 130 billion across iOS and Google Play in 2020, a 10% rise from last year. Google Play grew faster overall, outnumbering iOS downloads by 160%. But both app stores grew 10% in downloads overall.
Evaluating various categories of spending, 71% of every dollar went to games. Photo and video as well as social networking were also among the top-earning categories.
On a country level, India, Brazil, and Indonesia were the largest contributors of growth in downloads on Google Play. On the other hand, the US, Japan, and Saudi Arabia saw the greatest growth in downloads on iOS.
The total time spent rose 25% to 3.3 trillion hours on Android phones in 2020. Business app usage was up 200%, thanks to conferencing tools like Zoom Cloud Meetings.
Tik Tok grew dramatically and it is set to break into a billion monthly active users in 2021.
Disney+ grew and was ranked fifth in consumer spending among non-gaming apps in 2020.
Gaming grew the most
The biggest categories of growth globally were games, business and finance on Google Play and games, and business and utilities on iOS.
Games represented 45% of all Google Play downloads and it was 30% for downloads on iOS.
In gaming, the leaders were Among Us, My Talking Tom Friends, Roblox, and Call of Duty: Mobile.
Call of Duty: Mobile surpassed nearly a billion hours on Android phones in the peak month of its first year (October).
Pokémon Go , a game where people walk around a lot and meet other people, surprisingly continued to be popular. The lockdown forced developer Niantic to pivot the game so it could be played social-distanced and remotely. Perhaps that helped.
Via: App Annie
