If there’s one thing that the pandemic has done, it has been to give people plenty of time to kill on their hands. And what has been the most frequent pastime in such times? Data from App Annie says, the most frequent pastime in the recent months has been to spend a lot of online time in surfing through apps.
App Annie recently surveyed the data for Q1 (1st Quarter, or first three months of the years, from January to March) of 2021 to assess people’s online surfing patterns, and has concluded that some countries have seen massive surges in the time consumers spend going through apps, with the average durations reaching up to 5 hours. It also revealed that the app habits of consumers across all markets has risen, and has grown about 30 percent as compared to its value two years prior, during the first quarter of 2019, reaching a global average of 4.2 hours per day.
The survey was carried out using data from a number of countries, including the United States, India, Brazil, South Korea, Canada, and Australia, among others. The results revealed that the average time spent in India, Turkey, US, and Mexico, crossed the 4 hour mark for the first time. Countries like South Korea, Brazil, and Indonesia, on the other hand, had users spending more than 5 hours going through apps. In what might seem shocking to some but isn’t really shocking at all, is that the highest spurt was seen among India users, where the average time spent online grew by 80 percent in Q1 2021, as compared to Q1 2019. Second in line is Russia, with an increase of 50 percent, followed by Turkey and Indonesia, at an increase of 45 percent each.
Among the apps that are most frequently downloaded and visited are evergreens like Youtube, TikTok, Facebook, along with apps that have been trending recently (which were measured by App Annie by comparing the quarter-over-quarter growth in the download of apps through Google Play and iOS). These include the secure messaging apps Telegram and Signal, which have become especially popular in the Western markets.
Trading and Investment apps, especially Crypto, have also become massively popular, with Coinbase appearing as the 6th breakout app in the United Kingdom and the US, and Binance debuting at No. 7 on the list in France. Even in Asia, the trend remained the same, with Upbit rounding of the No. 1 position in South Korea. The scene was similar yet different in Japan, with PayPay, an app owned by SoftBank, Yahoo Japan, and India’s own Paytm. Online payment methods seem to have been sidelined during previous years, but are gaining momentum now. China, on the other hand, has mostly focussed on video editing and sharing, especially with TikTok.
Game apps have also made a mark on the Breakouts lists in many countries. Among the most popular have been High Heels, the hyper-casual game. The aim is to collect high heels, to get past obstacles. It ranked in No. 1 among games in the US and UK. Crash Bandicoots: On The Run, emerged as another front runner, with 21 million downloads within just 4 days of its release on March 25. As such, it hit the number 1 plsce in Germany, 2 in the US, and 3 in the UK.
