According to a recent projection on the condition of the app industry, revenue spent on apps and games will reach new highs in the third quarter. According to App Annie, consumers will spend $34 billion on apps and games in the third quarter of this year, up 20% year over year. The rise implies that the influence of the COVID-19 epidemic on consumer habits and behavior is having a long-term impact on how people use apps for entertainment, shopping, employment, education, and other purposes.
Last week, App Annie made news for manipulating its data using confidential sources in previous years, then misrepresenting this to its trading firm clients as having been statistically modeled with internal procedures to prevent such a thing from happening. As a result, the SEC reached a $10 million securities fraud settlement with entities that used the data to make investment choices. Despite these changes, App Annie data maintains a reasonably realistic depiction of the mobile market today, and it remains one of several top organizations that provide large app publishers, marketers, and investors with information about the mobile ecosystem.
In-game spending and mobile subscriptions continue to be the largest contributors to app revenue in Q3, according to the firm. The latter has been the subject of lawsuits and increased regulation as both Apple and Google fight to retain their right to a cut of purchases made through their app store platforms. Gaming continues to account for the majority of consumer expenditure, however, subscriptions have helped non-gaming spending gain ground in recent years. Android continues to outnumber iOS in terms of downloads, but the opposite is true in terms of consumer expenditure.
Google Play and, in particular, downloads in growing areas like India and Brazil, will have boosted downloads up 10% year over year to a record high of 36 billion in Q3. Brazil, the Philippines, and Mexico saw the most rapid increase, and the Latin American market have begun to attract the attention of global publishers as a sector with significant growth potential.
Travel, education, and medical care among the industries driving download growth, and all three have had pandemic implications. As the summer travel season picks up amidst massive vaccine distribution, travel app downloads on Google Play climbed 35 percent quarter over quarter and 15 percent on iOS. Medical and education apps, of course, have pandemic connections, as users turned to mobile technology to keep up with online learning as well as doctor’s appointments, COVID testing, and vaccine appointments.
