Meal Delivery app engagement is stagnating for the second year in a row, giving Meal Kit apps room to grow monthly active users (MAU) 98% from last year. MAU among the top 7 U.S. Meal Kit apps jumped 42% in Q1 2022 from Q4 2021, and another 56% in Q2. Meanwhile, MAUs among top Meal Delivery apps grew 1% and 2% across the same timeline. As Americans realize economic pressures, mobile data shows that high cost conveniences may be being cut. The Ultrafast Delivery app market (Getir, Gopuff, etc.) is a perfect poster child example. In Q2, it declined growth for the first time in two years at a -30% loss.
In its first appearance on our download leader charts, Sweatcoin is the most downloaded Health & Fitness app in H1 2022. Flo Period and Ovulation Tracker held the top spot for the full year 2021, but is losing its grip globally and, in particular in the U.S., as the Roe v. Wade decision surfaced mainstream media conversations about Flo's not-so-distant past sharing sensitive user data.
McDonald's leads all Food & Drink apps in new installs for the first half of the year by a healthy margin, beating out its top contender in Uber Eats by 70%. Looking back at the full year 2021 app download leaders, it was also McDonald's which led the pack. In addition to the Food & Drink category leaders, we've also posted the overall download leaders for H1 2022.
The top 10 quick-service restaurant apps in the U.S. were downloaded 10.4 million times in June, 3.7 percent less than those the month prior. Year-over-year in the month of June, downloads of the top 36 quick-service apps are up 35 percent. A download represents a new user and the first conversion on the mobile app customer’s journey.
Discord just surpassed 500M lifetime downloads and $100M in-app purchase (IAP) revenue. Originally started in 2015 as a VoIP and instant messaging social platform for the gaming community, today it serves a wide spectrum of interest groups, connecting them in "servers" to chat via text, video, or audio. The average session time per daily active user (DAU) on Discord is twice as long as that of streaming platform Twitch, and more than double that of Facebook Gaming, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, and Snap.
Spotify is the most installed entertainment app through the first half of 2022. We've also posted the overall download leaders for H1 2022. Spotify was #9 globally but did not break into the U.S. list. Even with Netflix's struggles, it's consistently being downloaded more than its competition, just not in its home market of the United States. If we had included TikTok in the Entertainment category (which may happen moving forward), it would have led all apps both globally and in the United States.
Meesho and Shopee are the two most downloaded shopping apps in the world at the halfway mark in 2022. Each have so many downloads that they appear in our Most Downloaded Apps in H1 2022 Worldwide chart, which is a first for shopping apps in the three years that Apptopia has done annual rankings. Shopee ranked first in 2021, but Meesho has been on a fast clip. Over the last 18 months, downloads grew 1400% from the full year 2020.
PayPal is still dominating the global payments scene, with close to 50 million downloads in the first half of 2022. PhonePe, which is not far behind PayPal, is a bit of a Super app. Used almost exclusively in India, it enables users to do everything from send friends money, buy ecommerce goods, invest in stocks and more. While super apps are less common in the United States, PayPal and Cash App are both heading that way, continually adding abilities to generate a larger share of the market and access more user data.
For the first time, gas savings and flight tracking apps appear in the 10 Most Downloaded Travel Apps, a sign of the times during this first half of 2022. FlightRadar24 ranks tenth worldwide, and Upside (cash back on gas) is the third most downloaded travel app in the U.S. The other changes in rank since our 2021 download leaders list shows up among ridesharing and online travel agency (OTA) apps.
The first half of the year is already over, it always flies by so quick! We're stopping to review the mobile app download leaders for the first half of 2022 (through June 30th). The two lists in this post do not include mobile games. To get a feel for how things are changing, you can review Apptopia's 2021 worldwide and US download leaders before diving into the below. We'll also be releasing H122 top charts for Travel, Retail, Fintech, Entertainment and more.
Airlines with high cancellation rates gained seven points in market share by daily active users (DAUs) year-to-date, but simultaneously lost just as much market share by new installs. It's not too hard to see what is going on here. Fliers are launching the app to sort out cancellations, then they are moving on to check out the more reliable carriers. DAUs typically equate to loyal customers. In this case, Spirit, JetBlue, Frontier, Allegiant and Alaska are gaining "Ghost DAUs". The here today, gone tomorrow type.
If you've been paying attention to the news, we've been hearing a lot about inflation and recession. A quick look at some high level indicators help explain why: Dow Jones Industrial Index = -14% YTD NASDAQ = -27% YTD Bitcoin = -57% YTD U.S. Consumer Price Index = +3.4% YTD U.S. national gas price average = +34% YTD So as you can see, things are going pretty well -_- . These kind of market conditions tend to change the way people spend. We've already reported that consumers are flocking to grocery store apps to access digital coupons to save on their supermarket shopping.
Costco, BJs and Sam’s Club mobile app downloads are expected to close out Q2 at a growth rate of 74% year-over-year, as shoppers commit to membership clubs for inflation relief. This is the highest YoY growth among clothing, fast food and home improvement retail categories. The user sessions correlation charted below indicates why: combined mobile sessions for the three store apps reached an all-time-high when the national gas average reached $4 per gallon in March.
Even with gas prices rising, people have the travel bug. New installs and monthly active users of car rental apps in the U.S. hit all-time highs in May. MAUs are projected to be higher in June but new app installs are expected to fall slightly. Clearly, there's a lot of pent up demand as people could not or did not want to travel in 2020 or 2021.
Among the top grocery store apps, user sessions were up 77% year-over-year in May, and reviews mentioning the word "coupon" shot up 75% from April. User sessions began to rise concurrently with food prices since Q3 2021. The record usage is primarily driven by inflation concerns, according to further analysis in a new report today, "Inflated Retail Records". Prior to this year, Top 10 Grocery Store apps peaked during Q1 2020, when lockdowns began and omnichannel shopping became a safety protocol.
Combining the DAUs of the top seven job search apps have been hitting new monthly highs since March of this year. After a period of ebbing and flowing, numbers have been climbing steadily for the past 365 days. Average DAUs for the month of June have grown 57% year-over-year. What's super interesting to note is that no month this year has hit a record for monthly active users.
The top 10 quick-service restaurant apps in the U.S. were downloaded 10.8 million times in May, 8.9 percent more than those the month prior. Year-over-year in the month of April, downloads of the top 36 quick-serve apps are up 29 percent. A download represents a new user and the first conversion on the mobile app customer’s journey. Normally, there are only one or two apps that break the million mark per month but in May there were three; McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Starbucks.
Today Klarna announced a physical debit card available in the U.S., expanding its “Pay in 4 service” offline and in direct competition with credit cards. The buy now, pay later leader had its highest amount of monthly active users worldwide in May, proving that it has deep relationships with shoppers, as it heads to another channel. In the U.S., Klarna's performance dominates the rest of the industry, and the Klarna Card is strategic to help keep mobile growth above the rest.
Stranger Things 4 and Obi-Wan Kenobi launched Friday at midnight on Netflix and Disney+, respectively. By Sunday of the holiday weekend in the U.S., mobile downloads increased 38% from Friday for both streaming competitors. Each also achieved the highest daily downloads for the month of May after a six-week slump. Since Netflix’s first report of significant churn at its Q1 earnings, more attention has turned to Netflix performance relative to its competitors.
Global downloads of the top 10 ultra fast delivery apps have grown 127%, year-over-year in Q1. With a more granular, monthly breakdown we can see a lot of this growth taking place in Q4 of 2021. As you can see in the chart below, this is a faster growth rate than that of the top 10 meal delivery apps (ex: Uber Eats) or top 10 grocery delivery apps (ex: Instacart). Meal delivery still takes the cake when it comes to absolute numbers.
