India sees 200% rise in time spent on mobile lock screens: Glance report

Pune: The time spent by the average Indian on his mobile phone lock screen has increased by 200% in the past year, with the average user unlocking his phone at least 70 times a day mainly to consume lock-screen content, according to the first India Lock Screen Report 2021 by Glance, an InMobi group company.

The report, titled ‘What India Consumes on Lock Screen’, said the average user spends at least 25 minutes consuming content on Glance, which uses the lock screen to provide personalised and locally relevant, live content to users.

The report is based on users’ behaviour on Glance between January 2020 and January 2021. The company has over 115 million daily active users. It found that the time between dinner and before bed was the most preferred time for viewing content.


"The Covid-19 pandemic has changed every aspect of our lives, including the way we consume content,” said Bikash Chowdhury, vice president (marketing) at Glance. “We see strong momentum in these trends in 2021 as well and are confident that this year will be another solid year of growth for lock screen-based content platforms and short-video apps."

The report found that there was a huge preference among the users for video content, which reported a 182% increase in consumption. InMobi’s short video app, Roposo, reported a 30% increase in engagement. Comedy and music were the most popular genres while users from non-metros preferred to consumer content in regional languages.

Entertainment as a category led in terms of content consumption followed by news and nature/wildlife. As a result of this, Glance has also emerged as a platform for new movie trailers and song releases, it said.

Videos accounted for 64% of overall content consumption, while articles (texts and images) accounted for the remaining 36%. With the Internet becoming more accessible and affordable, the consumption of video content in smaller cities has almost come on a par with metros and large cities. Cities such as Lucknow, Pune, and Patna are consuming more videos than Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Kolkata.

There has also been a 153% growth in mobile gaming during the lockdown. While a majority of the users prefer free to play games, they are open to experimenting, with 41% playing three or more games in a day.