JOIN USThe growth of mobile app usage is slowing globally, but India is an exception, a study says.
Conducted by Flurry Analytics, a division of Yahoo, the study puts the year-on-year growth in India at 43% in 2016, as against 11% in the global market.
The growth in India was led by the use of music, media and entertainment apps, which showed a triple-digit spike of 188%, followed by business and finance apps (176%) and utilities and productivity apps (99%).
However, personalisation of apps showed a decline in India too. Globally, the decline was 46% in 2016, and in India 32%. Messaging and social media apps remained among the most popular categories in India. Time spent on them grew by 52% in India and 44% globally. The ‘State of the App Nation in India’ study is backed by data gleaned from about 9.4 lakh apps, across 2.1 billion global devices from across the world. About 58,000 apps, across 147 million devices from India, use Flurry, a mobile analytics company owned by Yahoo, and were surveyed.
The trends show India leading the phablet (devices with screens between 5” and 6.9”) revolution. They have a market share of 61%, outpacing the growth in the US, where they enjoy a 48% market share.
“The decelerating rate of global growth could signal market maturity, saturation or simply the end of the app gold rush,” Christopher Klotzbach, director, Flurry from Yahoo, told reporters here.
India screenshot
Phablet most preferred mobile device with 61% market share
Music, media and entertainment apps saw biggest usage rise of 188%
Time spent on messaging and social media apps grew by 52%