App Annie dissects India’s fast-growing app economy, digs up new insights

Junde Yu, managing director, App Annie, at Tech in Asia Bangalore 2016. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Not too long ago, the top factors driving the app economy were downloads, revenue, and so on. But not any more. Now, it’s all about the amount of time users are spending on an app. And this is creating a whole new industry out there, said Junde Yu, managing director of App Annie – APAC region, at the Tech in Asia Bangalore 2016 conference. He was sharing insights on the state of the app economy in India and the world.

Six-year-old App Annie, which started in Beijing, provides rich data and insights on apps to help companies make right business decisions. It covers Apple’s App Store for iOS and Mac, Google Play, the Amazon Appstore, and the Windows Store – and offers support for monitoring Apple TV apps. It has products which are used by 94 of the top 100 app publishers globally and more than 500,000 registered app professionals. This is the rich data source it taps to derive insights.

Apps are taking over India

Source: App Annie.

“In India, just like the rest of the world, 93 percent of the time users spent on mobile is clocked by apps and not browsers,” Junde said at the Tech in Asia conference. No wonder all ecommerce companies are pushing their apps every chance they get.

“In 2016, India will see 7.7 billion app downloads from different app stores. This will make India the world’s 4th largest app economy after the US, China, and Brazil,” Junde said. App Annie estimates this number to soar to 20.1 billion by 2020.

Interestingly, though India is mobile first – unlike most of the rest of the world – when it comes to usage, 93 percent of the time spent on mobile is clocked by apps and not browsers. “This mirrors the user behavior worldwide,” Junde said.

Source: App Annie.

Flipkart and Amazon go neck-to-neck

No surprises here – “mobile ecommerce is one of the fastest growing sectors for app usage,” Junde pointed out, adding that the time spent shopping on mobile apps grew 11 times from the first quarter of 2014 to the first quarter of 2016.

Amazon beat Flipkart in the number of downloads – iOS and Android combined – but Flipkart stays on the top when it comes to the monthly active users on Android. “The competition is getting hotter than ever,” he said.

The top 10 retail apps, in terms of downloads, are:

• Amazon
• Flipkart
• Snapdeal
• Paytm
• Myntra
• Voonik
• ShopClues
• Jabong
• LimeRoad
• Wish by ContextLogic

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iOS on top in revenue, Android in downloads