Clubhouse to launch Android version in India on May 21 as downloads plummet

Clubhouse icon seen on a smartphone screen (Image: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Clubhouse will launch its invite-only audio chat app for Android users in India on May 21, hoping to reverse the sharp decline in downloads which fell 66 percent in April since it peaked in February in the country.

This is in line with the global trend of declining downloads the social media app has seen in recent times.

Experts said the Android launch may boost downloads the app faces fierce competition. Twitter has rolled out Spaces available for users with over 600 followers on May 3. US tech giants Facebook and Microsoft’s LinkedIn are working on their own Clubhouse like platform.

The app was launched in March 2020, bang in the middle of the pandemic. Its popularity soared since it launched and peaked after the appearance of Silicon Valley figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. India was no exception to this trend.

According to Sensor Tower data, a mobile app analytics platform, India currently has over 90,000 Clubhouse downloads in total in iOS.

But a fair share of downloads came since 2021 and peaked in February, when it saw 42,000 people install the app, according to data shared by mobile analytics platform Sensor Tower. This is a significant improvement from just 5 in September 2020.

The numbers halved to 20,000 in March and fell further to 14,000 in April. Between May 1 and May 12, there have been 5,000 downloads in India.

Its largest market continues to be the US with total downloads of 3.7 million, followed by Japan at 1.9 million. The app has total downloads of 14.8 million so far, according to data shared by AppAnnie, a mobile app analytics platform.

This is in line with the global downloads trends. From just 2000 in September 2020, it increased to 9.6 million downloads in February. From the high, this has come down to 2.7 million in March and 922,000 in April. First 12 days of May have seen 224,000 downloads.

For Clubhouse, just like any other social media platform, sharp decline in downloads is a concern. Retaining users was a challenge, with technology heavyweights launching their own Clubhouse-like application, making it more complex.

According to Neil Shah, Vice President – Research, Counterpoint, a market research firm, it was the competition that propelled them to launch Android application, which is clearly the next big growth opportunity.

In India, more than 95 percent of the population use Android. Globally, 72 percent consumers use Android as opposed to 27 percent iOS users as of April 2021, according to StatCounter, a web traffic analysis platform based in Ireland.

The company launched its Android version last week first for the US market. It has already been launched in its large markets like Japan. It will be launching in India this Friday at noon and the rest of the world later in the day.

The launch will give the boost to download numbers, but it is unclear if the launch alone will be successful given the competition it is facing from tech giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft's LinkedIn, Spotify and Reddit.

Take the case of Twitter Spaces. Since the launch of Twitter’s Spaces, many users have started using the feature for the reason they already have an established user base. Shah said Clubhouse needs to make it more attractive, which would take time and money, since it is a small firm.

Given that it is a well-funded startup, money is unlikely to be an issue, he added.

A digital marketing executive, who works with social media platforms for brand marketing for both Indian and global brands and did not want to be quoted, agrees with Shah that the application has to innovate fast and build scale at the same time to be successful.

Android will give the company scale, but building a creator community would be key, which is also what the company has been focused on in recent times.

Over the last few weeks, Clubhouse has launched initiatives to grow the creator community by helping them monetize and adding newer features to make content discovery easier for users.

"It is still early days for India. But as an audio social media network, I do see value in the coming months and quarters as more use cases develop," the digital marketing executive quoted above said.