At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic mobile app usage skyrocketed, with online shopping, entertainment, business and education services seeing rapid user growth. Download numbers are not rising as fast as they were, but they are still ahead of pre-pandemic levels and new data shows that consumers across a range of international markets are spending four to five hours per day using their favourite mobile apps.
Takeaways
- The time spent using mobile apps varies region by region. But mobile app usage data, released recently by Data.ai in its Q2 2022 Regional Pulse Index, highlights 13 countries where consumers are spending more than four hours per day using their favourite mobile apps. In Indonesia, Singapore and Brazil, mobile app usage passes five hours a day.
- Growth in mobile app usage peaked in 2020, with people shopping, working, studying and exercising from home. But the new data suggests mobile behaviors may have outlasted the lockdowns; time spent in apps adopted during the pandemic is still high in 2022, despite the return to more ‘normal’ ways of life.
- Data.ai – formerly known as App Annie – reports that some international markets have seen very significant growth in app usage over the past two years. In the second quarter of 2020, Singapore users were spending 4.1 hours in apps; that has increased to 5.7 hours in the second quarter of this year, a jump of 40%. In Australia, where growth was also 40%, usage went from 3.6 hours to 4.9 hours from Q2 2020 to Q2 2022.
Image: Data.ai
Even in countries where the length of time spent using mobile apps grew less dramatically, app usage increases were still in double figures:
- Canada +20%
- Indonesia +10%
- Russia +10%
- Germany +10%
Most popular apps
- Looking at the top-ranked apps for the second quarter of 2022, the report names photo app Instagram as the most popular app worldwide by number of downloads. Social video pp TikTok is the leader in terms of consumer spending for non-gaming apps. Facebook is number one for monthly active users.
The chart is still dominated by the established app giants of social media and video streaming.
Data.ai, Market Pulse Rankings Q2 2022
Although Data.ai’s app chart is packed with the usual suspects, from WhatsApp and Twitter to Spotify and Netflix, there are some less familiar names moving quickly up the rankings.
Jumping four places to number eight on the download chart is the Indian ecommerce app Meesho. Used by 100 million Indian shoppers, the apps developer says it has 44 million active product listings and took 5.35 million orders during a recent one-day sale event.
Dating app Bumble has also joined the top ten in the area of consumer spending. Bumble ranks in the top 10 apps by consumer spend for Q2 2022 in eight of the 11 markets analyzed, and has risen two spots to be ranked 10th globally.
Future app usage
Looking ahead, Data.ai asks if it is possible to spend six hours a day in apps? With app usage in the top two markets – Indonesia and Singapore – now topping 5.7 hours a day on mobile, and consumer appetite for mobile content still trending upwards, it seems very likely.
