Indian Mobile App Industry: Users have 32 app on Average, Facebook, WhatsApp, UC Browser most popular

There is an app for that – this phrase has become popular for a reason…and reason is simple…it is THE TRUTH – there is a mobile app for everything!

However, we Indians don’t go overboard when it comes to installing apps on our smartphones (there are exceptions though). According to a report by 9Apps, an average Indian user installs no more than 32 apps (lower than the world average) and only 26% users have Hindi language apps.

According to the report, most Indian mobile users continue to download apps via 2G network and prefer offline playback versus online streaming amidst sporadic connection.

App Market in India: Explosive Growth

Indian mobile users cumulatively downloaded 9 billion apps in year 2015, which is 5 times more than that of 1.56 billion they downloaded in 2014. As far as the app spending goes, Indians spent USD 240 million on apps in 2015, up from USD 140 million in 2014.

Most Popular Apps in India

WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and UC Browser were the top apps of 2015 whereas Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon and Paytm remain the most popular ecommerce apps.

17% of all daily app downloads continue to be games – with car racing and action games being most popular. India is Asia’s fastest-growing mobile gaming market with revenues expected to cross 1 bn by 2018.

Incidentally, among the top 6 apps,  4 apps are owned by Facebook (yeah, that’s the kind of dominance they have right now in mobile apps space)

Male Dominance / Age

Males dominate app downloads, with only slightly over 20% of all mobile internet users being females in India. The report states that even in near future, male will keep dominating app downloads by a very large margin.

As far as age of app users go, below 25 age category dominates with over 66 percent users being in that category.

Other interesting highlights

1. 70 percent of mobile population in India resides in Top 5 metro cities
2. English is the most used language in Indian App market
3. Samsung & local brands dominate the Indian mobile phone market, with Chinese brands now on the rise
4. The Top 10 most sold smartphones in India cost less than Rs. 10,000
5. 80% of Android OS users have version 4.4 or lesser. Only 12.86% are running Android 5.0 or higher.
6. 17 percent of all daily app downloads are games
7. Over half of the game downloads are either racing or action games
8. Tools are the most downloaded app category
9. Browser, Memory boost and file sharing are the top tool apps
10. Offline playback is preferred over online streaming by Indian smartphone users
11. Flipkart is the most popular ecommerce app

You can find more information on 9Apps site.