The phablet has been found to be the fastest growing mobile device globally with growth in India outpacing that in the US. As many as 38% of user sessions in India are on phablets against 21% in the US, as measured by Flurry, an app-analytics platform, says the “State of the App Nation in India” report from Yahoo.
It has also been found the use of apps is shifting from entertainment to more functional categories.
The report was presented during Yahoo's first Mobile Developer Meet-up in India, held in Bengaluru and Gurgaon, recently. The analysis is based on data drawn from 700,000 apps and 1.8 billion devices from across the world, and the 42,000 apps and 82 million devices from India, which use Flurry.
Here are some data as measured by Flurry year-on-year between May 2014 and 2015:
India’s app usage grew 131%, outpacing growth in Asia and globally. The Asian app usage grew 77% during the same period. |
42% of user sessions in Asia are on phablets vs. 31% globally. |
Phablet users in Asia engage in apps 78% more than the average smartphone users in Asia. |
App users in Asia spent 19% of their total app time on Shopping and Lifestyle apps, a category which is second only to gaming in Asia. |
Indian mobile shoppers shop almost round the clock, from 9 am to 1 am in the night, breaking only during lunch and dinner. Shopping on apps peaks between 9 pm and midnight in India. |
Action and Arcade games account for 39% of gaming sessions in India; and casual games represent 32% of gaming sessions. |
The top three app growth categories in India are personalization (such as Android launchers like Aviate and Hola), followed by News & Reading and Photography. Personalization apps grew 533%, news and reading apps 311%, and photography apps 178%. |
During the meet-up, attended by over 350 developers, Yahoo presented its developer suite, which is a set of tools that are designed to help them measure, advertise, monetize and improve their apps. The five components, which are being offered free to developers, are Flurry Analytics with Explorer, Flurry Pulse, Yahoo App Publishing, Yahoo Search in Apps, and Yahoo App Marketing.
Christopher Klotzbach, Head of Product Marketing, Flurry from Yahoo, said, “India has a huge, talented mobile developer base. We want to support app makers by equipping them with analytics and tools to build better apps, grow usage and monetize faster.” He said that the app use trends present a significant opportunity for app developers in India.
Ranjan Jagannathan, one of the participants in Bengaluru, said, “There were discussion on value proposition, monetization, user engagement etc.” He has a startup Synapse Inc, which seeks to enhance the user engagement of the app with the user. Elaborating on how user engagement is critical, he said, “With a games app, the user tries to relax after taking a break from work. But with a utility app like spreadsheet, it's the opposite, the user has serious work to do on the app.”
