India is fastest growing market for mobile apps in world: App Annie report

The first quarter of the calendar year 2018 for India has proved its mettle of being the world's second-largest country in terms of app downloads in 2017. Now India has become the world's fastest growing market for mobile applications.

According to an App Annie report, the country leads in the most number of mobile app downloads across Apple ioS and Google’s Android Play Store. This also contributes to the surge of revenue in the first quarter of 2018.

Among them, video streaming apps such as JioTV, AirtelTV, and Hotstar have led the show in which three of the top ten apps downloaded in the country fall in this category. China and the US streaming interest seems to have come down with just one app each fall under the streaming category.

The report further added that India is the fastest growing of any market, its Q1 Y-o-Y growth was 41 per cent. With 24 per cent revenue growth, Indonesia ranked second, while Albania came in third at 23 per cent.

“India was the number one market globally by combined downloads on iOS and Google Play, ahead of the United States (2nd), and China (3rd, iOS only),”  said App Annie spokesperson, reports ET.

The two most popular applications in India by revenue were content streaming service Netflix and dating app Tinder.

India ranked 29th in terms of absolute revenue generated from the sale of mobile apps estimated at $47 million. Based on the combined iOS and Google Play revenue in Q1 2018, US stood first with a spend of $3.2 billion, Japan was second with $2.7 billion of revenue, while China was third at $2.4 billion (iOS only).

Internet users in India, which is expected to reach 500 million mark by June is a huge market for the smartphones. With the rise of cheap internet services and low-cost phones, the mobile app market is expected to see an exponential growth in coming years.

As far as the content streaming market is concerned, the rural population is slightly catching up the urban internet population.

In gaming category, there are no gaming apps in the top 10 in India, while China and the US contribute the chart with two(Travel Frog and PUBG Mobile) and one (PUBG Mobile) app respectively.

The report also added that globally, 2018 has emerged as the strongest quarter the app economy has ever seen, breaking records set in the last quarter of 2017, in terms of both consumer spend and downloads.

In January, the app market data and insights company had given its report saying that India has emerged as the second largest country after China in terms of app downloads in 2017. An average user in India has nearly 80 apps and accesses over 40 of them in a month.