On January 16, App Annie, a market research firm based in San Francisco, USA, released the Mobile Market Report 2019. According to the report, the total global app downloads in 2018 have exceeded 194 billion, an increase of 35% over 2016. China is the world’s largest downloader of mobile apps (Apps), accounting for almost 50% of global app downloads.
According to the report, global emerging markets account for three of the top five download markets, including India, Brazil and Indonesia. At the same time, US download growth has slowed. In terms of consumer spending, the countries with the largest contributions are: China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
In 2018, global consumer spending on apps reached $101 billion, a 75% increase from 2016. Among them, China’s market expenditure accounted for nearly 40% (about 40.4 billion US dollars). In this $10 billion in app spending, games accounted for 74%, while non-gaming apps accounted for only 26% of total user spending.
Despite China’s significant contribution to downloads and spending, Chinese users have the fewest installed apps on their phones compared to other countries. Users in China and India install an average of 50 to 60 apps, while users in the US, Japan, Korea, and Australia install an average of more than 100 apps on their smartphones.
According to the report, this is related to the ubiquity of low-cost Android devices with limited storage in China.
In addition, although there are many applications installed by netizens around the world, many of them are not used frequently, which is the same feature of users in all countries.
App Annie also mentioned in the report that the five companies that have won the most consumer app spending in the world are Tencent, NetEase, Activision Blizzard, BANDAI NAMCO and Netmarble, all of which are game companies.
The data shows that Tencent’s “Glory of the King” in 2018 in the global App Store and Google Play total revenue of nearly 2 billion US dollars, becoming the world’s strongest mobile phone game this year.
In addition to games, the most expensive apps on a smartphone are related to shopping. In 2018, global citizens spent 18 billion hours on shopping apps, up 45% from 2016. Among them, Chinese citizens spend 7 times more time on shopping apps than Indian citizens and 11 times more than American citizens.
In addition, there is a phenomenon that users are becoming more accustomed to completing various things on their mobile phones, and the average time spent on mobile devices has reached 3 hours per day.
The report also said that in 2018, Tencent also ranked in the top of the non-gaming application rankings, for example, Tencent video application list ranked third.
In addition, other applications in China are also outstanding, including the online video platform iQiyi, which is the fourth non-gaming application in terms of overall revenue. The byte-jumping platform has become the fourth-most non-gaming application in 2018, and it has achieved the best results in the fourth quarter of 2018 and is still growing rapidly.
