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Moneycontrol Bureau
India led the worldwide downloads for Google’s Play store in 2016 beating the US and Brazil, as per a report by app analytics firm App Annie.
This lead can also be attributed to the large smartphone population of about 350 million users, which is likely to increase substantially in 2017 aided by free data launch offers by mobile operators.
Pokémon GO by Ninantic was the most downloaded mobile game of 2016. The developers of the game earned a whopping USD 800 million in consumer spending within just 110 days of its launch.
Piano Tiles 2 and Subway Surfer were the second and third most downloaded games of last year.
Mark Zuckerberg ruled the world’s app ecosystem in 2016. Facebook was the most used application on both iOS and Android platforms followed by WhatsApp Messenger, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. All of them are owned by Zuckerberg-led Facebook.
US-based Spotify application generated most revenue in 2016, followed by Japan based chat messenger Line. Video streaming application Netflix was third in the list of apps that earned most revenues. However, YouTube was by far the leading video streaming application.
Globally, the total time spent on apps grew by 25 percent with 15 percent more downloads in 2016 as compared to 2015.
How you can make millions via an app in China
China topped the charts in terms of iOS worldwide downloads and iOS worldwide revenues through apps. While Japan maintained its overall lead in average revenue per user through an app, China stood out in terms of growth, increasing nearly 10x since 2014.
“As a global app publisher, if you aren’t in the China app market, you may be missing out,” said App Annie in the report.
China surpassed the US in iOS App Store downloads. With over USD 2 billion in publisher revenue, China’s Q4 was the biggest quarter for any country in app store history.
Highlights of worldwide app market
The global revenue growth rates for both the iOS App Store and Google Play were greater in 2016 than 2015.
Total time spent in apps worldwide increased by over 150 billion hours y-o-y, reaching nearly 900 billion hours in 2016.
This resulted in annual downloads reaching over 90 billion, an increase of more than 13 billion across the iOS App Store and Google Play.
In 2016, publishers were paid over USD 35 billion in revenue across the iOS App Store and Google Play.
This represented a 40 percent rate of yearly growth, surpassing 2015's rate. Revenue on the iOS App Store alone grew by nearly 50 percent in 2016.
Report’s insights for internet entrepreneurs
Major download growth early on lays the foundation for later revenue and usage gains.
Mobile accounted for 44 percent of retailers' online traffic and 31 percent of their sales in 2016. Internet Retailer predicts worldwide mobile retail sales will reach USD 220 billion in 2016, a 53 percent increase versus 2015.
As in the US, European retail banks must continue to increase user engagement to fend off the threat from fin-tech innovators.
Pokémon GO's monetisation in 2016 demonstrates the viability of novel gameplay ideas in mobile gaming.
The future of augmented reality will be in mobile apps.
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