Indians second highest downloaders of apps in 2021, but spend less: App Annie

However, they don’t spend much on mobile apps and games. The result: India is not even among the top 20 countries in the world, despite spending an estimated $170 million on mobile games. Market research firm App Annie reported its findings mobile status 2022 The report was released on Wednesday.

The report also reveals that Indians were the fifth highest smartphone users in the world in terms of the number of hours spent on their phones per day. With everyone spending an average of four hours and 42 minutes on their phone per day, India lags behind Brazil and South Korea, but ahead of countries such as Singapore, the US and China in mobile phone usage.

In terms of collective hours spent by the country on mobile apps and games on Android devices, Indians grew their usage by 6% year-on-year to spend 699.9 billion hours by 2021. The country’s usage is only behind China, which has a collective figure. Standing on mobile app and game usage fell an accidental 3.4% to 1.12 trillion hours.

Interestingly, 2021 was the second year that India did not see a quarter-on-quarter increase in the number of hours spent using mobile apps and games. The report claimed that Indians spent significantly less time gaming on Android devices than before. While Q2 2020 saw 347.6 million hours of gaming, gaming was reduced to 186.7 million hours in Q4 2021. This is 46.2% lower than the peak, which was seen during the months of the first lockdown implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The numbers somewhat contradict the global smartphone market, which saw a 6.5% drop in the number of hours spent by users on mobile gaming in Q4 2021, as it peaked in Q2 2020.

To be sure, mobile games continue to account for the majority of smartphone apps generating over $100 million from users by 2021, despite significantly shorter usage times than social media and photography apps in India and around the world. . Of each, there were four app games that exceeded this figure, according to App Annie.

In India, the demand for cryptocurrency trading platforms also saw a clear rise. Among finance apps, four of the top 10 apps downloaded in India by 2021 are cryptocurrency trading platforms – CoinSwitch, CoinDCX, WazirX and Binomo – ranked 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th.

In the social media space, India is the only country where TikTok does not feature in the list of top three most downloaded apps as of 2021. Following the Indian government’s action, the Bydense-owned short video social platform is banned in India. Apps with links to Chinese servers are part of more than 250 such mobile applications banned from TikTok. The latter is the most downloaded app of 2021, and also the app with the highest consumer spending.

However, Indians chose to divert most of their spending on the mobile app Hotstar, followed by dating app Tinder and the professional social media, LinkedIn.