State of Mobile 2023: Major Trends and Practices

Mobile has truly transformed the way we interact with the world around us. As mobile continues to break its records with regard to the time people spend on it and the revenue that it helps generate for major apps, the big screen is becoming increasingly irrelevant. This can be corroborated by the newly released State of Mobile 2023 report by data.ai, previously known as App Annie, which reveals that the total number of hours spent on mobile in 2022 exceeded 4 trillion hours, with an average of 11.2 billion hours spent collectively on mobile every day in 2022.

The report provides the readers with a comprehensive look at the app economy across iOS, Google Play, and third-party Android app stores in China and the top 10 mobile-first markets. The report sheds light on several trends in how the world continues to move towards mobile.

Here are the major highlights of the report.

1. Consumers in Mobile-First Markets Spent 5 Hours On Mobile Every Day

Across the top 10 analyzed markets, the average number of hours spent on mobile exceeded 5 hours in 2022, thereby, marking a 9% increase from 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic had begun spreading.

Users from Indonesia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and South Korea spent more than 5 hours every day on mobile apps in 2022. The time spent on mobile over the last four years grew the fastest in Saudi Arabia by 68%. This was followed by Australia and Singapore as they registered an increase of 67% and 62%, respectively.

2. 3 Categories Made Up 50% of Time Spent on Mobile

While social media, short videos, and video-sharing platforms made up almost 50% of the time spent on mobile, the highest consumer spending was registered by 6 platforms i.e.; OTT, dating, short videos, video sharing, comics, and music & audio. Interestingly, OTT platforms ranked 1 for both consumer spending as well as downloads.

Surprisingly, mobile web browsers made up only 8% of the time spent on mobile. This clearly means that while the web is an important aspect of every marketer’s marketing and user acquisition funnel, these apps also require meaningful engagement.

3. Consumer Spending on Mobile Gaming Dropped in 2022

Consumer spending in mobile gaming declined by 5% to nearly $110 billion in 2022, thereby, signaling a drop in consumer spending for the second year in a row.

However, game downloads surged by almost 6.67 billion to hit nearly 90 billion downloads across the world despite a drop in consumer spending. This signals a consistent rise in game downloads over the year, which stood at about 68 billion in 2019.

4. Consumers Spent Nearly 110 Billion Hours on Shopping Apps

Time spent on shopping apps has been steadily increasing since 2019 and in 2022 consumers spent almost 110 billion hours on shopping apps. While the time spent on shopping apps registered almost a 9% growth since 2021, there was a bit of a slowdown in terms of the compound annual growth rate between 2019 and 2022 as the growth in 2021 was almost 22%

Markets that saw maximum growth in hours spent on shopping apps include India and Indonesia from the APAC region. Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina registered maximum growth in the Latin American market.

5. TikTok Emerges as the 2nd Non-Game App to Surpass $6 Billion in All-Time Consumer Spending

Although TikTok did not even rank among the top 100 apps by consumer spending in any year until 2020, it has since exploded onto the scene. In 2022, the app reached the top spot by garnering over $3 billion in consumer spending- second only to Tinder.

Also, TikTok’s downloads over the last ten years have grown rapidly. Between 2013-2022, TikTok’s downloads are more than twice as many downloads as its second-closest competitor, YouTube.

Wrapping Up

Mobile has truly emerged as the greatest platform for driving user engagement. Through its immense power of disruption, it has outperformed every traditional marketing medium. The insights from data.ai’s State of Mobile 2023 Report bear ample testimony to this. Therefore, it is now up to the marketers how they choose to leverage the findings of this report to their advantage and drive consumer interaction.

To delve deeper into the findings of this report, click here.