Mobile Status Quo: Mobile first determines the lives of all
The keyword mobile first could not be more apt in our modern times. Smartphones and apps are increasingly defining our everyday lives. Banking transactions, holiday planning or online shopping – most of the time we do all this with an app. Whether we are sitting on the sofa at home or on the road. The data and analysis company AppAnnie has taken a close look at how strong mobile use has become in the meantime and what the mobile status quo will look like in 2020. We have prepared the most interesting facts from their State of Mobile Report 2020 for you.
Smartphone usage increased
In 2019, the average user spent 3 hours and 40 minutes per day with his smartphone. This is an increase of 35% over two years earlier. Especially the markets in Indonesia, Brazil and Indonesia are becoming increasingly mobile. France, India and Canada are just behind. There, the use of the smartphone increased by 25% per day. With these considerable figures, many questions naturally arise: do users continue to download apps from the App Stores, which apps are they willing to pay for and what do users actually do with their smartphones all day long?
App Store downloads continue on the road to success
Although there has been repeated talk for years that app downloads are declining, a different picture emerged in 2019: users downloaded a total of 240 billion apps. This means that worldwide downloads have grown by 45 % compared to 2016. The majority of these downloads are attributed to markets such as India, Brazil and Indonesia, where the mobile infrastructure is beginning to take off. In the larger markets such as the USA, Japan and Korea, downloads have declined somewhat, but no less impressive. 12.3 billion apps were downloaded in the US, 2.5 billion in Japan and 2 billion app downloads in Korea.
In-App Subscription spending celebrates success in non-gaming apps
Under Apple’s iOS system, 97% of the top 250 apps were realized through in-app subscriptions. Google was able to achieve a total of 91% of its expenditure through such subscriptions. Above all, dating and streaming video apps were very successful with in-app subscriptions: Tinder, Netflix and Tencent Videoto exceeded consumer spending in 2019 for non-gaming apps. The reason for this is that in-app subscriptions can help drive app monetization. At Google, 79% of the top 250 apps in the US were monetized through in-app subscriptions. Under iOS this share was higher at 94%.
Higher download figures for shopping apps
Shopping enthusiasts use the mobile way for several things at once: searching for suitable products, comparing them with each other, then buying them and hopefully ending up as a long-term customer of Company XY. From 2018 to 2019, the download figures for shopping apps rose by 20% – to over 5.4 billion dollars. In the USA, for example, between November 1 and December 2, 2019, spending of 33.1 billion dollars was generated by mobile shopping – equivalent to 40% of all mobile online purchases.
2020 will be the mobile year: an outlook
The mobile status quo in 2020 predicts that mobile advertising spending will reach 240 billion dollars, compared to 190 billion dollars in 2019. Consumer and smartphone advertising spending will rise to over 380 billion dollars worldwide in 2020. The gaming industry will continue to expand with Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass. New games for users will be published there, creating new revenue streams for developers. The network expansion of 5G will continue, from which first and foremost gamers will benefit again. But the extent to which this will look like in Germany is still in the stars :p.
