Global consumer spending on mobile apps to cross $110bn by 2018
Worldwide consumer spending on mobile apps will grow by roughly 30 percent next year to over $110 billion, according to a new report from app market data and insights company, App Annie, that forecast the state of the app economy for the next year.
Games will remain the biggest moneymaker for app developers although a newer monetisation model-in-app subscriptions are already having a big impact on consumer spending, the report indicated.
According to App Annie, the shift is a strong reflection of the increasing maturation in the app economy as consumers look for more value in their purchases.
China still remains one of the key markets and nothing is changing that as it is seen “outpacing” the rate for the rest of the world. China is already one of the top markets.
India is expected to be one of the upcoming hotbeds for Android phone users. The report stated that in 2017, time spent by Indians on Android devices went up by 50 percent – one of the factors behind it is the large chunk of the young population.
The number is projected to increase as more people take ownership of smartphones. Recently, India scored the top position in the list of countries where people could not live without the Internet according to data from Ipsos.
Specifically, a report in TechCrunch states India witnessing an accelerated rate of app downloads ever since the launch of Reliance Jio network in September, offering mobile data at affordable rates.
Equally, a Statista chart states that worldwide consumer spending on mobile apps will have the highest number in the Asia Pacific region.
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The App Annie report also called AR apps seeing an increased rate of download in 2018. Streaming video apps, as expected commands 85 percent increase over consumer spending on the iOS, and over 70 percent on Google Play.
The report equally made a mention of P2P payments app commanding a significant portion of apps download, a recent example of which in India is Paytm and Google’s recently launched Tez.
App Annie is predicting that China’s rate will significantly grow and outpace the rest of the world in 2018. This is despite China already being in the top on iOS app spending.
Next year will be the 10-year anniversary of the Apple App Store and the Android Market.
Meanwhile, in the US, data from US Research firm Kantar says that Apple’s iOS piece of the pie fell quite significantly in the US year-on-year due to the launch of the iPhone X whereas for Android it jumped from 63 percent to 66 percent in October-end.