Indian consumers are spending almost five hours a day on mobile apps: Report

A new report by App Annie, an app market analytics firm, puts numbers to something we’ve all known for 19 months now — that we’ve all been spending far more time on our phones since the pandemic hit.

How much more?
According to the report, smartphone users in India spent 4.8 hours a day on average using various mobile apps in July-September (Q3) 2021, making Indians “among the most mobile-first consumers in the world”.

The time Indians spend on mobile apps had been rising steadily before the pandemic hit, but began to skyrocket early last year when Covid-19 and lockdowns became our collective reality. This meant that Indian consumers spent more than four hours a day on mobile apps for the first time in 2020, or a collective 651 billion hours for the year. That was a 40% jump from 2019, when Indians spent “just” 3.3 hours a day on apps.

In fact, the time spent every day using apps increased from under three hours in Q1 2019 to 4.6 hours in Q1 2021, a stunning 80% jump in two years.

Mobile gaming
India is the world’s top market for mobile gaming in terms of downloads across Android and iOS. In the first half of 2021, Indian players installed 4.8 billion games, or one in every five installed globally, the report said.

The top game in this period, by downloads and active users, was Ludo King, a free-to-play title developed by Indian studio Gametion Technologies.

The report noted, however, that Ludo King, which was made in India, is something of an anomaly. Indian-made games barely figure in the country’s games charts, and just 7.6% of the top 1,000 games are made by Indian companies. “The situation is very different in other regions. In China, the homegrown ratio is 60%,” the report said.

Mobile payments
India is also setting the pace on mobile payments, the report said, largely thanks to the Unified Payments Interface. The volume of UPI transactions doubled in a year to nearly 8 billion in Q2 2021. Earlier this month we reported that UPI transactions crossed $100 billion in value for the first time in October.

This growth, the report said, has created a significant opportunity among developers to create apps for merchants. “According to our numbers, one of the market-leading products Khata Book had 14 million average smartphone monthly active users in India in Q2 2021,” it stated.

Others that have benefited from UPI are 'buy now pay later' and credit apps such as StashFin, Dhani, Kissht and Slice Super Card, which give consumers access to near-instant credit.

Other highlights
Finance: Crypto trading apps are booming, with CoinSwitch, WazirX and Zebpay Bitcoin Wallet seeing the most cumulative downloads in Q2 2021.

The number of hours spent on the top 5 investment and trading apps rose 65% in 2020 from the previous year. Upstox Pro, WazirX and CoinSwitch saw the greatest growth in downloads among finance apps in Q2 2021.

Social networking and video streaming: YouTube is still the video platform Indians spent the most time on, while Telegram broke into the top 10 social and entertainment apps in the second half of 2021.

Shopping and food: In Q1 2021, digital-first shopping apps saw 23 average sessions per user each month, as compared to 10 for those with an online and offline presence.

Food delivery apps Zomato and Swiggy, and fast-food apps from the likes of McDonald’s and KFC dominated food and drink apps by downloads in Q1 2021.