State of the Industry
Global applications are expected to have significant growth in all segments over the next few years with a projected $732 billion in revenue by 2027, according to Statista. Growing revenue with mobile apps, there are 2 main avenues, ad spend and app store spend. In 2022, while app store spend was down 2% from 2021 to $167 billion, mobile ad spend increased 14% to $336 billion as stated by the State of Mobile Report 2023 (Data.ai). While all these big numbers are impressive, it doesn’t even come close to how much time people spend on apps or the number of downloads. For example, in 2022, there were more than 485 000 app downloads per minute. While people spent collectively 11.2 billion hours per day on apps as stated by the State of Mobile 2023. This provides important insight on how to reach customers, especially on their mobile devices.
Global Content Trends
While it is good to know overall trends in the global app and consumer spending ecosystem. A closer eye on content trends can help telecom companies decide where to invest in their content. Over the last year, travel has seen the demand for language learning apps increase. Time spent on these apps has grown nearly 50%. This is just one of the verticals that has been increasing. People are now spending more on in-app purchases for dating applications than ever before. This vertical increased by 12% globally though certain countries saw even more growth. The largest increase was India with +54%, then Mexico with +47%, quickly followed by Canada with +46%.
During the global events of the past few years, business apps have taken priority place in helping people connect globally. This can be seen in two main verticals: communications, which increased by 33% in 2022, and job hunting, which in the USA alone increased by 60%.
In 2022, exclusive sports streaming content for major events such as the Football World Cup and top cricket tournaments drove downloads, while sports betting app downloads increased by 8%. This highlights another trend, the second screen where during live events such as football matches people use a “second screen” , usually a mobile device, while watching TV. Ultimately, the most surprising trend was the 5% spending drop in gaming apps to $110 billion, as this vertical had a strong growth for many years.
