India widens lead in app downloads driven by Jio launch

Technology

Most of the growth in global mobile app downloads in the third quarter of 2017 was accounted for by India, says app analytics firm App Annie. The report did not disclose India-specific figures, but it said that the country surpassed the rest of the markets in absolute download growth by a wide margin.The number of downloads in India in Q3 (July-September) was twice as high as that in Q3 2016, the report said.
Download numbers have risen sharply since the launch of Reliance Jio in September last year, which brought down mobile internet access costs dramatically .

Global mobile app downloads -in Apple Store and Google Play Store -grew 8 per cent to 26 billion in Q3, compared to a year ago. Google Play Store alone accounted for 18 billion downloads. These numbers include only new downloads and does not count reinstalls and app updates.

India became the largest app downloader from Google Play Store in full-year 2016, accounting for over 6 billion downloads, or more than 10 per cent of the total downloads.

The US was No. 2 at just about 6 billion. India was No. 3 in 2015, but the Jio phenomenon pushed it to the top the following year.
Currently , Brazil is the No.2 downloader from Google Play Store, and the US is No. 3.

"Continuing a long-standing trend, download growth on Google Play was fuelled by emerging markets. The ongoing influx of first-time smartphone owners in these countries has been a significant driver of this growth.Given that these markets still have a relatively low level of smartphone penetration, we expect these trends to continue for the foreseeable future," the App Annie report further said.

Video streaming apps drove growth in both stores. Hotstar is one of the top video streaming apps for India. The other top apps in the Google Play Store currently are WhatsApp, FB Messenger, ShareIt, and Truecaller.

The total time spent in apps worldwide among Android phone users grew 40 per cent year-over-year, coming close to 325 billion hours in Q3 2017.According to an earlier report, the most active users in India spent over 4 hours per day on mobile apps.

Source: gadgetsnow