With about 200% growth, India is fastest growing market for app downloads in world

India may be the second-largest market for app downloads after China in the world but when it comes to pace of growth in the last three years, it is on top.

India has emerged as the fastest growing app market in the world with 19 billion apps downloaded in 2019, up from 6.55 billion in 2016, according to data from analytics and market intelligence firm App Annie’s State of Mobile 2020 report published last week.

The global average of 45% pales in front of India's growth which witnessed a rise of 190% in the space of three years. In total, consumers globally downloaded over 204 billion apps.

Indian consumers downloaded apps across segments including social media, retail and video streaming.

China was the second-fastest-growing market with about 90 billion downloads.

As mobile phones emerged as the go-to device for users worldwide, consumers spent 35% more time on mobile in 2019. India saw strong growth here too with the average user spending 25% more time on their mobile phones each day in 2019.

In terms of time spent on shopping apps, India was the second-fastest-growing market with 50% yearly growth after Indonesia, which saw 70% growth last year.

Indians spent 3.5 hours per day on their mobiles in 2019 whereas its global counterparts spent 3.7 hours per day.

Though, Indian consumers still contribute a very little percentage of the total consumer spending on mobile apps, revealed the report.

Indians have spent only $120 million on mobile apps whereas China dominates mobile spending with $48 billion, which is 40% of total revenue generated through mobile apps.

PUBG Mobile registered maximum spending in India among gaming apps whereas Carrom Pool topped in terms of downloads. In-app subscriptions contributed to 96% of spend in top non-gaming apps.

Among the e-comm apps witnessing maximum year-on-year growth, Amazon emerged as the top e-comm app in India in 2019. Flipkart and Paytm were next in the list.

India's top breakout video-streaming app was MX Player, followed by Hotstar and Netflix.

The hyper-local social app Sharechat grew over 300% from Dec 2017 to Dec 2019 among smartphone users in India, showing appetite in the market for more specialized and localized social networking.