As per the latest report published by media measurement and analytics company comScore, digital media usage time is primarily driven by mobile apps, with smartphone apps accounting for half of all time spent.

The recent study, which focuses on the trends in leading global markets, especially the US, states that an average user spends 16x more time on the top apps than they do on the top mobile websites, but mobile web tends to capture a larger audience.

Interest in new apps waning
As far as the popularity of new mobile apps is concerned, the report says, “App discovery is down across several channels, including the app store, word-of-mouth and advertising. Is interest in new apps waning? Millennials still have a lot of excitement for new apps, but older smartphone users do not match millennials’ level of interest.”

One of the surprising revelations of the study is the link between app design and its usage. “The top reasons for deleting apps are largely consistent across age groups, with usage frequency ranking as the top factor. Logos matter. Because apps confer social identity, millennials will delete an app if they don’t like how it looks on their screen,” states the report.

Top Growing Apps

The comScore report also underlines the clout of social media users. As per the study, Facebook maintains its top position in the US as the most downloaded and engaged app in terms of monthly users, while YouTube and Snapchat rank higher on the list among younger millennials.

“Many of today’s most prominent fast-growing apps are marketplaces or services that are thriving due to network effects. Engagement in several content categories continues to transition to apps, with news seeing one of the most notable shifts from a year ago. The average user spends 2.3 hours per day using mobile apps which dominate mobile web in usage time, 87% to 13%. Moreover, half of digital media time spent occurs in smartphone apps,” the report further adds.
Global trends and India

According to App Annie’s fourth annual Retrospective Report, which was released earlier this year, India’s mobile app market grew sharply in 2016 outpacing the US and ranked number one in terms of Google Play downloads, highlighting the vibrancy of the country’s mobile ecosystem. The report also stated that Indians downloaded over 6 billion apps in 2016, up from 3.5 billion in 2015. That 71% growth was significantly higher than the overall 15% growth in app downloads around the world.

Speaking about the growth of mobile apps in India, Rohit Sharma, CEO & Founder, POKKT, says, “The last few quarters have seen a huge growth in Mobile Apps eco-system in India. Be it e-commerce, travel, OTT or gaming, more and more users are consuming content through Apps. Another big trend we see is mass adoption of gaming because of surge in app consumption and today everyone is using mobile gaming apps.”

There is no doubt that over the years, India has seen a phenomenal growth in smartphone usage primarily due to cheap data plans made possible by Jio combined with even cheaper handset choices by Chinese OEMs. “Our mobile economy is adjusting to the needs of new data and India’s app download rate is one of the highest in the world as is the time spent on devices. The shift from e-commerce to m-commerce is accelerating with Indians engaging with their mobile shopping apps almost round the clock,” says Sonia Kaul, Head - Product Marketing, mGage India

Stating that the Indian Mobile App Market is currently witnessing a bubble break situation primarily due to the fact that markets are evolving and so is the consumers’ mindset of making choices, Malik Gilani - Founder & CEO, Esar Media & Advertising, shares, “The mobile app players in Indian markets have realised that acquisition of users can happen easily, but converting those users into customers is a challenge. Hence, this paves way for the role of ad partners making their scope quite huge and much more attentive in that manner. For the mobile app market to truly flourish in India, we need to have exact emphasis of our target audience and their target groups of browsers."

"With increased network penetration in India today, and telecom providers competing aggressively with each other to offer the best to users on the go, the average mobile user is exposed to a plethora of apps. As a result, the Indian mobile app market has seen tremendous growth, and this is only expected to magnify further,” added Dushyant Jani - Founder &CEO, Mobclixs.