Google Play Now Has 2.5 Billion Users! Indian Apps Witness 200% Increase In Monthly Users

The world can be divided into three categories, as per a quote, Some make it happen, some see it happen and some wonder what happened!

Now, in the corporate context, Google falls into the category of those who make it happen. However so, even they might retrospect, they would know that some of their products or businesses have far exceeded their expectations.

Google Play Has 2.5 Billion Users Globally!

One such business was the merger of Google Music and Google eBookstore in 2012. Much to the surprise, after a period of 10 years, Google Play now has 2.5 billion active users globally, with India assuming critical importance in this time.

If the data by the company is to go by, then as compared to 2019, there has been an increase of 200% increase in active monthly users in 2021. This is especially noted in the apps and games published by Indian developers.  

Not just downloads, but also the spending in the form of paid app purchases, in-app purchases and subscriptions has increased significantly. It has increased by 80%. From the time spent metric, there has been a 150% increase in the Indian apps and games. 

Google’s Interest in India

Aditya Swamy, director of Play Partnerships at Google, in a statement said that “India has transformed into an app-first country in the past decade, consistently emerging as one of the top downloaders for apps and games across the world”.

Google play has the Play Store for app downloads, Google Photos. For video streaming, it has Google TV as well as the Play Pass subscription service, with latter being launched in India earlier this year.

The global active users figure of 2.5 billion links with active Android phone users alongside other devices and services, including Android TV and Google TV for smart TVs, Android tablets, Wear OS smartwatches, smart speaker products (including Nest Audio line) and the Nest security camera solutions, recently launched in the country.

The Director added that the country India has already crossed the milestone of 100 unicorns and what is phenomenal, is to see that most of these businesses are powered by apps. 

The first Indian game as per the Google, is Ludo King, which crossed the 500 million downloads mark.

Another important element of Google Play is the Play Protect security service. The service which was earlier introduced in 2017 for all Android devices, scans as many as 125 billion devices every day in order to check for malware or malicious apps in users’ devices.

After many years, it was in 2022 that the Google updated the logo for Google Play.

Now Google is focusing on India-specific initiatives and in India, a self-learning platform for developers, build, publish and scale apps was launched in the form of Google Play Academy.

More than 80,000 developers have been trained in India since its launch. 

Not just that, but also Indie Games Accelerator and Google for Startups Accelerator programs have attempted to provide startups and gaming studios with access to specific curriculum and mentoring.

With the help of Startup Hub of the Union ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY)¸ Appscale Academy was launched by Google.

Looking at the stats, out of the 100 startups that were chosen, 35% were based in Tier 2 or Tier 3 towns, while 58% had woman leaders.

Swamy said that “We remain committed to building a local and helpful Play for India. We want to help every developer with an idea to capitalize on the potential to reach 2.5 billion monthly active users and 190 countries with Google Play. India is today uniquely positioned to become a leading hub for global app innovation and there is tremendous potential for Indian startups across the country.”

The focus has now turned to the recently announced initiatives, the Google Startup School India, which will attempt to help as many as 10,000 startups in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, as well as the Google for Startups Accelerator – India Women Founders, which will provide a platform for women founders in India.