Mobile Outperformed 2020 expectations with Consumers Spending $143 bn on Apps

16 January 2021: Consumers spent $143 billion on mobile apps in 2020, an increase of 20% from 2019, according to App Annie, the mobile data and analytics company helping brands and publishers create winning experiences on mobile. App’s report titled, The State of Mobile 2021 report, states that the year 2020 accelerated mobile adoption as consumers used their mobile devices to connect, work, learn, play and escape despite COVID-19 restricting their way of life. Top markets driving this spend included China, United States, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

Time spent on mobile surged with 4.2 hours being spent on Android which amounted to 3.5 trillion hours, up by 20% and 25% respectively from 2019. Mobile gaming remained unrivaled as this segment is on track to surpass $120 billion in consumer spend in 2021 which will capture 1.5x of the overall gaming market. Meanwhile, Social networking apps took center stage with time spent per user increasing by up to 325% YoY. TikTok is on track to hit 1.2 billion monthly active users in 2021 as consumers look to stay connected as well as entertained. In 2020 ad spend grew to $240 billion up by 26% from 2019 and Funding remained strong with $73 billion being invested in mobile companies.

“The world has forever changed. While people stay at home across the world, we saw mobile habits accelerate by three years,” said Theodore Krantz, Chief Executive Officer of App Annie.

According to James Cordery, Head of Performance Marketing Strategy, Deliveroo, “In 2020, we were able to focus on executing mobile strategies that really delivered incremental growth for Deliveroo. We were able to couple consumer insights with market context from App Annie to make decisions that have had a high impact on our performance.”

www.appannie.com