With 4.8 Bn new installs, India tops app downloads in first three months of 2019

With an unprecedented rise in smartphone ownership and cheaper data prices, India has emerged as a top nation in application downloads in the first quarter of 2019.

Indians downloaded close to 4.8 billion apps on their mobile phones, about 60% more than second rank country, said data published by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

US was the second-ranked country in terms of worldwide downloads with over 3 billion new installs. It followed by Brazil, Russia, and Indonesia among 10 countries.

According to Randy Nelson, Head of Mobile Insights at Sensor Tower, this has largely been driven by new smartphone ownership and stability of it will also be tied to new users of the smartphone. In last five years, app download has been growing steadily in India, he added.

US and Chinese apps majorly dominated the Indian app ecosystem. The top 10 most downloaded applications were TikTok, WhatsApp, Like, Hotstar, Facebook, Messenger, SHAREit, Helo, MX Player and UC Browser, added the report.

Even on Google Play download, the trend was similar India grabbed the top spot with about 4.7 billion installs. It was followed by Brazil, the U.S., Indonesia, and Russia. India’s downloads witnessed 29.4% year-over-year growth to 4.72 billion. Whereas in US Google Play downloads dropped 3.8% year-over-year.

Games, social, entertainment, tools and photography apps were the top categories that were downloaded, according to Sensor Tower.

India, in the last couple of years, has emerged as go-to-market for global internet firms and smartphone companies.

As per McKinsey report, the number of internet users in India will grow by about 40 per cent to between 750-800 million and double the number of smartphones to between 650 million and 700 million by 2023.