Hello and welcome to our first Pulse on Current App Trends Report of 2021! In this installment we cover the top apps of January 2021 and Reddit’s supercharged growth. Don’t forget to take a look back at our last Pulse on Current Trends Report, where we reviewed overall app engagement trends for 2020.
Quick Review: 2020
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: 2020 was a record-breaking year for mobile. In 2020, Americans spent 8% more time per day on mobile devices than watching TV (on average, 4 hours a day in H2 2020). For other countries these numbers were even higher. In Indonesia, average time spent on mobile was an astonishing 5.2 hours per day.
Source: App Annie
Across verticals, mobile engagement and revenue flourished. App developers drove over $140 billion in revenue across iOS and Android. This represented a 20% increase from 2019. In global engagement, 2020 saw 218 billion new app downloads, a 7% increase from 2019.
Uninstall Rates Are on the Rise
That said, while more apps might be getting downloaded, more apps are also getting uninstalled. In 2020, the uninstall rate within a 30-day post install window was 50%. That represents a 66% increase since 2017 when it was 33%.
Source: AppsFlyer
Mobile games were the darling of 2020, driving the most revenue and downloads of any app category in 2020. That said, gaming apps suffer from the highest uninstall rate of all app categories. In fact, 3 in every 5 gaming apps are uninstalled within 30 days, showing that users are constantly trying out new titles.
To confront this challenge, gaming apps are leading the way in retargeting investment and strategies. In fact, we saw 155% increase in retargeting spend between December 2020 and January 2021 by game apps.
Top Apps
Source: Sensor Tower
In January 2021, TikTok remained the highest grossing non-gaming app. It generated $128 million in revenue, slightly lower than December 2020 at $142 million in revenue. Japanese manga subscription service, Piccoma, was the second highest earning non-gaming app worldwide in January 2021 with more than $96 million in gross revenue.
Source: Sensor Tower
In terms of downloads, messaging app, Telegram, was the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide with more than 63 million installs. Tiktok was the second most installed non-gaming app. It drove 62 million installs, up from 56 million installs in December 2020.
Honorable Mention: Reddit
GameStop shares soared in January 2021, largely thanks to a ‘meme war’ waged by investors banding together on Reddit. The fervor led to the mobile app’s best ever month of installs as it hit 6.6 million worldwide downloads, up 43% from December. This further represents 128% in year-over-year growth from January 2020.
Source: Sensor Tower
Consumer spending in Reddit’s mobile app hit $670,000 in January, up 31% from December. The app also saw a 54% uptick in monthly active users compared to January 2020 as well.
Takeaways
Many of the overall app trends in 2020 carried over to January 2021, including the continued supercharged engagement of mobile apps in the age of social distance.
- While more apps might be getting downloaded, more apps are also getting uninstalled. In 2020, the overall uninstall rate within a 30-day post install window was 50%. Gaming apps suffer from the highest uninstall rate of all app categories.
- In January 2021, TikTok remained the highest grossing non-gaming app, generating $128 million in revenue.
- Messaging app, Telegram, was the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide with more than 63 million installs.
- Reddit had a banner month in January 2021, driving 6.6 million worldwide downloads. A ‘meme war’ waged by investors banding together on Reddit to buy Gamestop shares led to the mobile app’s best ever month of installs.
