Consumer Mobile App Use Increased 40 Pct During Lockdown

The pandemic saw an all-time high record of mobile app usage, according to market data from App Annie.

The monthly time spent on apps rose 40 percent year over year in the second quarter of 2020, resulting in over 200 billion hours logged on apps in April, the data showed.

The trend continued in countries that were hit particularly hard by the pandemic, with 35 percent more growth in India, 30 percent in Italy, and 15 percent in the U.S., with the increases directly tied to the government-mandated social distancing and lockdown measures for much of the earlier months in the year.

But as App Annie noted, the markets will begin to come back at some point, which will leave the phone makers with the challenge of continuing the momentum of those apps in their customers’ lives.

In terms of what people were doing with their phones, the most-downloaded types of apps on Google Play were games, tools and entertainment.

The games category was the largest on Google Play, but the data also showed a trend toward business, health and fitness, and education apps (like Duolingo or Google Classroom) during the lockdown period, with increases of 115 percent, 75 percent and 50 percent respectively. Video apps like ZOOM Cloud Meeting, Google Meet and others saw an uptick as well, as people transitioned to working and learning from home.

In the Apple App Store, the largest categories were games, photo and video, and entertainment. Apps for shopping and medical needs also saw an uptick in usage.

According to App Annie, customers spent $27 billion on apps in the second quarter, a record high.

PYMNTS talked to 35 payments executives about the changing world, finding that many were in agreement on the dwindling usage of cash as people went digital. PYMNTS also found that merchants will have to accommodate a drastic shift in the level at which people want to do things from home and from their phones, so companies will have to offer more delivery or pickup options.