App IQ is the industry’s first comprehensive taxonomy — replacing antiquated app store categories with unparalleled granularity into the mobile ecosystem across 19 genres and 152 subgenres. Our State of Media & Entertainment report is an example of App IQ in action, allowing us to dive deep to uncover nuanced insights publishers need to succeed on mobile
2021 was a memorable year for ROBLOX. According to our analysis, the world-building game ended the year as the mobile game market's top title by consumer spend, #3 by downloads and its #2 by monthly active users (second only to PUBG Mobile). It was a remarkable 12 months. And in February 2022, the company itself revealed its latest set of key metrics, showing both strong growth in 2021and forecasting double-digit top-line growth in 2022.
In 2021, downloads in Brazil grew 30% vs. 2019 and +63% in consumer spend, with categories like Entertainment, Gaming and Finance driving growth. Overall, Brazil saw over 10.3 billion apps downloaded in 2021, a 30% increase from pre-pandemic levels in 2019. Brazil has seen phenomenal growth in consumer spend, adding an additional $1.13 billion in 2021, $200 million more than 2020, equating to 22% growth YoY as mobile gaming and in-app subscriptions go mainstream.
The headline numbers for data.ai’s State of Mobile Gaming 2022 Report reveal the extraordinary success of the mobile gaming space over the 'COVID' period. If we look at the figures for 2018 to 2021, they show that consumer spend on mobile games rose from $73.8 billion to $116 billion. That's a rise of 60%. Over the same period, downloads grew from 63.7 billion to hit 82.98 billion – a rise of 30%.
Restaurants might have reopened in 2021, but people decided they liked ordering in anyway. App makers responded with 10 minute deliveries – and the category hit new heights. In 2021 the phrase 'fast food' took on a new meaning. The 2020 lockdowns had propelled the emerging habit for home delivery. In March 2020 global weekly sessions on Food and Drink apps stood at 1.9 billion. By December 2021 they had scaled to 4.4 billion.
Mobile games sustained strong momentum from the pandemic surge — reaching new heights at $116 billion in 2021 alone. Prior to 2020, mobile gaming was already in a league of its own — with record breaking levels of downloads and consumer spend across the app stores. But the following two years took engagement to new heights. Read our latest State of Mobile Gaming 2022 Report to uncover the phenomenal year gaming had on mobile:
data.ai’s State of Mobile 2022 report contains the top 10 keywords across 11 app categories and 15 countries. Want to peer into the collective mind of the world's mobile users? There's only one place to look – the App Store search box. Whatever the public is interested in, it's all The Quick ASO Checklist to Increase App Downloads there in the keywords they enter every day. And this makes the search box of great interest to mobile marketers.
In Silicon Valley, Netflix is a rare unicorn that pivoted not once but three times, ultimately allowing it to develop programs tailored to multiple audience interests simultaneously. The company started as a mail order DVD service. When that model ran its course, it switched to streaming movie content online. Then, in 2011, it switched again, moving away from licensing third party content in favor of its own homegrown material. In effect, it became a studio.
What happens to the virtual dating market during a lockdown? On the one hand, with bars and clubs closed, people gravitate towards virtual meeting places. But on the other hand, what are these people to do when they find a suitable partner online but cannot take the next step and meet in person? This was the conundrum facing Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, Badoo and the rest for the past two years, although they were certainly not complacent about it.
At the height of the pandemic, there was plenty of discussion about what the response to the pandemic would have been if it had come, say, 20 years ago. Take working from home – a perfectly logical solution to the need for social distancing. But in a time before broadband and video conferencing, this would simply not have been feasible for the vast majority of employees. Similarly, think about mobile apps and their role in the pandemic response. Yes, there may well have been contact tracing and systematic vaccine roll-out plans in the 1990s.
2021 was another momentous year for mobile app publishers and developers. Over a year after the first pandemic-induced growth, the app industry rocket ship was still on an upwards trajectory. But against that, there were new operational challenges to navigate. For example, Apple 'deprecated' its identifier (IDFA), which meant most advertisers were no longer able to track and measure their users' actions without an informed opt-in. However, despite IDFA hurdles, as App Annie's State of Mobile 2022 report makes clear, the collective numbers were all up.
Q2 2020 will go down in history as an unprecedented period for the mobile economy. People stayed home and downloaded a lot of apps. With gyms closed in many countries, health and fitness app downloads surged from 565 million to 811 million in that single quarter (Q2 2020). After that dramatic spike in the early days of lockdown, download volumes of health and fitness apps settled down last year. Aside from the covid-induced anomaly year, the long term trend for the category was still growing as we head into 2022.
When the mobile phone first emerged, it was a communication tool. People used phones to talk. Later, they texted. Then, around 2006, industry insiders started re-positioning the phone as a multimedia computer you could carry around in your pocket. They were right, of course. The smartphone did become a tool for information-gathering, shopping, banking — touching virtually every facet of our lives. It changed mobile behavior forever.
Disney+ has surpassed a major milestone of $2 billion in lifetime global consumer spend through the app stores. Disney+ joins the coveted $2 Billion Dollar Club — in the company of only 34 other mobile apps and games as of January 25, 2022. Within this group, mobile games represent 26 of the 35 apps — alongside only 9 non-gaming apps. Furthermore, Disney+ is 1 of only 5 video streaming providers to reach this coveted milestone, alongside Netflix, YouTube, Tencent Video and iQIYI.
Across demographic cohorts, by age and gender, we’ve seen clear indications of preferences emerge. While some trends hold true, However, the intensity of the skew varies by country, along with the apps most likely to be used by each demographic cohort. However, it is important to note that our analysis is limited to males and females only and is not representative of all gender identities.
Interest in mobile gaming, cryptocurrency and user-generated content reached a new high in 2021, laying the bedrock for the Play-to-Earn industry. A record 3.8 trillion hours were spent on mobile devices in 2021, with the average user spending 4.8 hours per day on mobile. Mobile gaming was in high demand — to the tune of 83 billion downloads, an increase off the back of an already record-breaking 2020. Cryptocurrency apps Coinbase, Crypto.com and Binance dominated the breakout Finance apps charts around the world
In 2021, the world adapted to an ongoing pandemic. New variants kept the world on COVID alert. Industries shifted, rebounded and re-emerged; working styles adapted and consumers doubled down on their mobile-first habits: choosing to spend more time on their mobile phones than watching TV. In this new normal, the app economy continued to prosper. In App Annie's State of Mobile 2022 Report, we reveal another astonishing year for app developers, with revenue, downloads and time spent all soaring to new levels.
Apple is reported to break iPhone sales this holiday season selling over 40 million devices from Black Friday to Christmas. As consumers unwrapped new iPhones and Android phones on Christmas morning, they downloaded a flurry of apps and games, activated new subscriptions and bought new in-app purchases to uplevel their gameplay, access new lives and upgrade their avatars' skins.
Neobanks, also known as challenger banks, are financial technology companies that offer specialized software and features that traditional brick-and-mortar banks have not been able to match. These include a range of features such as removing monthly or overdraft fees, incorporating reward programs geared towards freelancers, adding the ability to receive paychecks early, layering in tools to help build credit, and even providing educational components.
According to the United Nations, India is expected to become the world's fastest growing economy next year. It will grow by 6.7% in 2022. The number one tag also applies in the mobile context. New data from App Annie reveals India to be the 2nd largest market in the world for app downloads to date in 2021. This is building on an impressive 2020, in which Indian consumers installed 24 billion apps – up 28% year on year.
