Indians’ app usage at new peak

According to a third quarter 2021 report by mobile analytics firm App Annie, Indians spent 4.8 hours every day on an average during the September quarter, up from four hours in the first quarter of 2020.

Total app downloads grew 28% from the year-ago period to 24 billion during the quarter, it added.

India is the largest market globally for mobile gaming, accounting for one in every five downloads—4.8 billion of the 24 billion downloads was mobile gaming apps, the report said.

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Despite increased interest in fantasy sports apps and real-money gambling platforms, Ludo King was the most downloaded game in the first half of 2021, in terms of downloads and average monthly active users. While Chinese apps led the charts, homegrown game publishers accounted for just 7.6% of total game downloads, it said.

The report also suggests that despite the government’s ban, PUBG Mobile remains popular among Indians. While Garena Free Fire, a game that competes with PUBG, accounted for the most consumer spends during Q3, the popular battle royale game from Krafton Inc. was second in terms of money spent by consumers. The report did not reveal how much they spent on this game.

Krafton, the developer of PUBG Mobile, also launched an India-only version of the game, called Battlegrounds Mobile India in July.

Fintech apps, including the government-owned unified payments interface (UPI), witnessed increased usage during the period. In fact, Indian users spent 5.4x more time on fintech apps than they did in the year-ago period.

The third quarter witnessed a spike in online purchases mostly on e-commerce platforms, on the back of higher festive demand.

Crypto platforms WazirX and Coinswitch Kuber, along with trading platform Upstox Pro, recorded highest growth among finance app. However, the App Annie report did not reveal the growth in user base.

Coinswitch, which joined the unicorn club in September—the second crypto platform from India to achieve $1 billion valuation— said it had more than 15 million users.