Jenam 2011The last App Annie Report confirms the important role mobile technologies play as nations continue to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. App usage, purchases, and time spent using apps all increased as the world turned to mobile to keep things together.
The great opportunity
This boom in attention and use is attracting great interest from venture capitalists. With the digitization of all facets of professional and personal life, there is no shortage of ideas.
What are investors particularly interested in? AppAnnie says VC Money is particularly focused on solutions for financial services, transportation, commerce and purchasing, but there is interest across all industries.
It is important to have an overview of investment trends: a 26% of total global venture capital funding goes to mobile-related companies. In fact, $ 73 billion poured into mobile last year.
The other part of the business case here is attention and commitment. Mobile is the hub at home and at work. This is causing remarkable changes in the way we spend our time. Americans now spend 8% more time on mobile devices than they do watching TV, according to the report.
This pattern is repeated internationally. Consumers in Indonesia, Brazil, India, Mexico, Argentina and South Korea spend more than four hours a day on their mobile devices, and most other countries are not far behind.
This means that mobile has become the center of the attention economy. In the United States, Gen Z, Gen Y, and Gen X / Baby Boomers spent 16%, 18% and 30% more time, respectively, year-over-year in their most used apps, the report says.
And consumers spent $ 143 billion on or in apps in 2020, up 20% from the previous year.
How the business is evolving
Apple remains at the forefront of the new mobile economy. iOS 14 quickly achieved higher adoption rates than previous generations of the operating system, which means advertisers need to be serious about the decision to limit app tracking. (There’s real money at stake. Mobile ad placements grew 95% over the year, with interstitial ads growing the most.)
With the nations try to work from home and businesses around the world looking for digital solutions for activate B2C and B2B communications, the world has seen an increase in the use of business applications. AppAnnie reports that the time spent in business applications increased 275% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2020.
“As businesses rework flexible and remote working options, usage of business collaboration applications is poised to remain high, placing greater demands on home data usage and speed. , an area ripe for 5G, ”wrote App Annie.
While most of the data reports focus on the continued dominance of games, social and video apps, there was several interesting information about the impact of mobile and COVID-19 on work and communication: communication such as Twitch and Discord, community-based applications, including Nextdoor, and payment applications in general have joined the more traditional leaders of the space.
It seems that consumers are more and more aware of need to protect privacy, with highly secure messaging apps like Signal grabbing attention.
Industry transformation
Finance, investing, education and fitness applications have boomed. Revenues from e-books increased by 30%.
Use of financial applications such as like digital wallets like Apple Pay, for financial services and loans, and for investments, all continue to grow. The report tells us that mobile stock market activity climbed 55% globally, Robinhood, Cash App, TD Ameritrade, Yahoo Finance and Webull Stocks were the top five investing apps.
The use of iOS within the enterprise is also on the visible increase, explains the report, citing HSBC’s efforts in the mobile space as an example. The bank is embrace the Apple ecosystem as it strives to provide cutting edge mobile services to customers.
The transformation of retail has also intensified. Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Target and Instacart grabbed the attention of consumers last year, as time spent in retail apps on mobile devices skyrocketed. Food delivery services also saw their usage increase by 105% year-over-year in most markets, which was particularly beneficial to UberEATS.
The biggest takeaway from data must surely be that mobile has absolutely become essential in all aspects of life. As it becomes impossible to exist without access to these devices, it seems inevitable that we will end up seeing mobile access as a form of human right, since without it it becomes impossible to fully participate in our increasingly digital society.
At the same time, as digital technology penetrates deeply into our world, companies keen to embrace change have a huge opportunity. “There has never been a moment of such great potential as this”, Apple CEO Tim Cook said.
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