“Let it be a little bigger than the smartphone but not as big as the tablet.” That seems to be what mobile device users world over are saying, when they are looking out for a new device. We are talking of the phablet (portmanteau of phone and tablet), a device whose average screen size is between 5 and 6.9 inches.
Last year, every quarter, the market share of phablets has grown: 33% in the first quarter, 36% in the second, 39% in the third and 41% in the fourth, says the annual report of Flurry Analytics, a division of Yahoo.
India leads the growth curve, with a market share of 61%, which is higher than that of the US, which is 48%.
There was a 188% year-on-year growth for apps meant for music, media and entertainment in India. Christopher Klotzbach, Director, Flurry from Yahoo, attributed this steep increase to the rise of phablets and better Internet connectivity. Business and finance apps grew 176%.
Among utilities and productivity apps, the share of phablets was 63%. “Phablets are the preferred device in India. We know that users who have a phablet are three to five times more likely to engage in streaming content and similar activities,” Klotzbach said.
Growth in app usage
The usage of apps in India grew 43% year-on-year in 2016, while it was 92% during the same period in 2015. The time spent in social and messaging apps grew 52% in India, while it was 44% globally.
Personalisation apps have shown a marked decline in 2016. While globally the time spent on it dropped 46%, in India, it declined 32%. Flurry attributed this to operating systems integrating the functionality of these apps natively. Interestingly, in 2015, there was a huge jump in the usage of personalisation apps (332%), like Android lock-screens to emoji keyboards.
Shopping applications have continued to gain popularity, growing 31% globally and 12% in India.
Potential for gaming apps
Gaming saw the time spent decline 4% globally. However, bucking the trend, India saw a growth of 8%. Klotzbach said this indicated there was an opportunity for game developers in India.
In order to track the performance of the game, Parking Frenzy 2.0, its developer, Games2win, uses Flurry Explorer. The developers found that users who bought cars gave them two times more retention. While initially, the car store was hidden inside the store, which was two clicks away from the home page, in the current version, the car store has been made just one click away from the home page. According to the developers, this change has helped them boost car consumption by 3.26 times.
Apps and advertisements
James Kelm, Senior Director of Product Management, Flurry, said mobile ad spend has been steadily growing. In the US, while it was about $10 billion in 2014, it was $21 billion in 2016.
He said native ads are the in-thing nowadays, with greater returns on investment. The eCPM (a measure of revenue from online advertisements) for native video advertisements grew 447% over native display ads, which in turn grew 190% over display ads.
When it comes to the tricky question of insertion of ads in apps, his advice to developers was to integrate them early. That way, both the developer and users understand the value of the ad. The disadvantage of inserting ads later is that users who have got accustomed to an ad-free experience might get put off when ads start appearing later, he said.
