AppAnnie's 'State of Mobile Report: Indians spent a third of their waking hours on the mobile in 21

This report needs to be read in conjunction with my earlier post on App Annie's State of Mobile Report 2021.

India continues to hold the second spot in terms of the largest app downloads market.

The pandemics and social distancing accelerated the mobile habits in 2020, which have been solidified in 2021. As a result mobile adoption boomed in 2021, with growth across downloads and time spent on apps

India clocked over 26.6 billion app downloads in 2021- around 40% growth from 2019 when annual new installs was 18.9 billion downloads

Indians spent almost a third of their waking hours on their mobiles in 2021,

The emphasis on social distancing since 2020 has enhanced digital consumption across the world including India. The average hours spent on a mobile per day per user surged by around 4.5% from 3.7 hours in 2019 to 4.7 hours in 2021.

The time spent on mobiles in 2020 had stood at 4.5 hours per day. Overall, India saw 655 billion hours spent on mobiles in 2021 a 37% increase since 2019 (381 billion hours).

Shopping Apps

Consumers in India spent 7.6 billion hours on shopping apps - a 16% year-on-year (YoY) growth from 2020, and 80% overall growth since 2018 (4.2 billion hours).

Social Networks

The biggest gainer among social networks was Meta-owned photo- and video-sharing app Instagram, where users spent an average 13 hours every month - a 32% YoY growth from 9.8 hours in 2020.

Communication Apps

Indians spent an average 19.8 hours every month on WhatsApp, a marginal 1.5% dip from 2020 but an overall 3.1% growth since 2018.

Gaming and finance contributed to the spike in app downloads as India witnessed an 85% growth in downloads in 2021 at 9.3 billion downloads, in comparison with 2018.

Downloads of finance apps grew from 0.5 billion in 2018 to 1.1 billion in 2021.

Interestingly, downloads of health and fitness apps peaked during the pandemic's onset in Q2 of 2020 at 115.4 million.

However monetising remains a challenge for the app economy in India and does not feature in the top 20 markets when it comes to consumer spends.