Social platforms, e-commerce and mobile games dominated the list of India's top downloaded apps on Google Play Store and Apple App Store, according to estimates shared by app intelligence firm Sensor Tower to Moneycontrol.
Meta-owned Instagram, which doubled down on its short video feature Reels this year, topped the list of most downloaded Android apps with 118.9 million app installs this year, while Facebook took the ninth spot with 110.4 million app installs.
WhatsApp Business, which has witnessed significant traction this year, also found a place at the tenth spot with 108.5 million Android app installs.
Flipkart's value e-commerce platform Shopsy was one of the biggest gainers this year, clocking 652% year-on-year growth in Android app installs at 156.5 million downloads. Rival Meesho took the second spot with 186.7 million Android app installs.
To be sure, these are overall app install numbers and we haven't been able to source the number of active users.
Top iOS apps of 2021
The list of top downloaded apps on iOS was more diverse with WhatsApp leading the charts, followed by Instagram and Google Pay.
Top apps in terms of consumer spend
Mobile games continues to lead the charts in terms of consumer spend on Play Store and App Store, taking six of the top 10 spots on the leaderboard.
The list was spearheaded by Garena's battle royale game Free Fire that clocked $133.9 million in app spends across both the app marketplaces. These figures include the standard Free Fire version that was suspended by the Indian government earlier this year and the Free Fire Max version.
Google Play registered $466.7 million in app spend this year until December 20 while the App Store accumulated $184.1 million, taking the overall mobile app spend to $650.8 million.
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