Lockdowns are starting to end and fewer people are now working or studying at home. Despite that, there has been a record increase in user time and money spent on mobile apps in Q3 2020. People spent 180+ billion hours using mobile apps in the period, which is a 25% increase compared to last year.
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Facebook applications lead the chart for most-used apps with the top 4 being Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. These four were followed by online shopping platform Amazon, streaming giant Netflix, music streaming brand Spotify, and the Chinese social media app TikTok.
As for in-app spending, people spent a total of $28 billion during the quarter, most of which came from Apple’s App Store. The iOS App Store brought in $18 billion (up 20% YoY), whereas the Google Play Store reached $10 billion (up 35%) in user spending.
However, Google Play Store was the clear victor in terms of app downloads. People downloaded 33 billion (up 10% YoY) new apps from Play Store, while the iOS App Store only recorded 9 billion (up 20%) new downloads. These results exclude third party stores, meaning that overall downloads on Android likely had a much bigger lead.
The balance between gaming and non-gaming app downloads was nearly even on Google Play Store. 45% of the downloads were games and 55% were other apps, whereas only 30% of the downloads on the iOS App Store were games. Regardless, gaming apps were still the most profitable on both app stores.
Subscriptions were the money makers on both platforms for non-gaming apps. The biggest returns came from streaming services, especially since several new streaming services were launched.
Source: App Annie
