2021 a record year for mobile applications

Mobile adoption exploded in 2021, with growth in app store downloads, usage and spending, and consumers spent a record 3.8 trillion hours on mobile devices, according to mobile data and analytics company App Annie.

In his Mobile State 2022 report, the analytics company revealed several trends in how the world continues to move towards mobile apps. It found 2021 to be a record high as consumers continued to embrace a mobile lifestyle, with users spending 4.8 hours a day on mobile devices in the top 10 mobile markets, spending $170 billion on apps, up 19% over last year, and downloads up 5% to 230 billion.

Developers released two million new apps and games in 2021, bringing the total number of apps and games ever released on iOS and Google Play to over 21 million.

Google Play accounted for 77% of all app and game releases in 2021. On iOS and Google Play, games accounted for 15% of all new app releases in 2021. The remaining 85% of new apps spanned all store categories of applications, from mobile-pioneers like social industries to mobile industries like insurance and healthcare.

Apps are also being removed and phased out over time, so the number of apps and games currently available for download on app stores stands at 5.4 million, including 1.8 million on iOS and 3.6 million on Google Play.

Another key element was the continued explosion of social and photo and video apps, with the report showing that seven out of 10 mobile minutes were spent on these categories. App Annie predicted that as mobile usage increases in emerging categories, these consumers will also engage more in early categories such as social media, communications and photography.

While apps such as YouTube and TikTok have seen an increase in market share over time, this has largely not come at the expense of current habits. Instead, consumers have transformed historically non-mobile time into time spent in apps and games.

Financial apps have proven to be a key trend in 2021, showing strong growth globally. App downloads in India broke the one billion barrier in 2021, fueling an overall 28% year-on-year increase in financial app downloads globally, which totaled 5.9 billion.

Digital challenger banks – or neobanks – which do not have a physical presence, have grown in popularity as YONO SBI, Nubank and PicPay each saw an annual increase of more than 30% in the average number of average monthly users (MAU ) in the world. Brazil was a particular hotspot for neobank adoption because it has a large population that currently does not have retail banking relationships. The country’s Nubank and PicPay had the second and third highest average MAUs in the world in 2021, while its C6 bank and Banco PAN saw more than 200% year-on-year MAU growth.

The study found that the mobile shopping habits catalyzed during Covid-19 have solidified. Time spent in shopping apps reached more than 100 billion hours globally, up 18% year-on-year, with strong movement in fast fashion, social shopping and supermarket players who are mobile enthusiasts. The countries with the fastest annual growth are Indonesia, Singapore and Brazil, at 52%, 46% and 45% respectively.

“Mobile is the best ever and the must-have device of the future,” said Theodore Krantz, CEO of App Annie. “The big screen is slowly dying as mobile continues to break records in virtually every category: time spent, downloads and revenue. Mobile brings us closer together, whether virtually or in person.”