Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok among most popular apps of 2020
The market of mobile apps continued to grow in 2020 in spite (or rather because) of the pandemic. In fact, new app downloads grew seven percent year-over-year to 218 billion, as per a report in App Annie. Further, consumer spending on app stores also witnessed a growth of as much as 20 percent year-over-year, along with a significant rise in time spent on apps.
Notably, consumers' spending on app stores including Google Play, Apple's App Store, and third-party app stores reached $143 billion across the globe in 2020, the mobile analytics firm App Annie revealed in its annual The State of Mobile 2021 industry report. That amount roughly translates to Rs. 10,45,988 crore. The spending was led by China, followed by the United States and Japan.
As the health crisis led to temporary closure of offices/schools, and forced most of the world's population to stay home, the average time spent on mobile devices grew significantly last year. In the US, time spent on mobile was eight percent more than time spent on watching live television. Around the world, consumers spent 3.5 trillion minutes particularly on Android phones, the firm said.
Talking of India, the average number of hours spent on mobile devices per day climbed to 4.6 hours from 3.3 hours in 2019. Similar trends were also observed in other markets including China, Japan, South Korea, and the UK.
The video sharing platform TikTok made a massive jump in terms of its growth in hours spent per user, marking up to 325 percent year-over-year growth. The huge growth came despite its ban in India and criticism by governments in some markets including the US. The report also projects that the app is set to reach 1.2 billion active users this year.
Meanwhile, Facebook led the list of apps with the most monthly active users worldwide, with its native app securing the first position followed by WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. In India, the average time spent on WhatsApp grew to 21.3 hours per month from 17.2 hours in 2019. TikTok, however, emerged as the most downloaded app in 2020, followed by Facebook, WhatsApp, and Zoom.
As most people started working from home and switched to remote education programs, virtual meeting apps such as Zoom and Google Meet saw a rise of 275 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020. Further, more hours were also spent on streaming services. For instance, YouTube saw up to six times increase in time spent per user as compared to the next closest app.
