After the app economy first slowed in 2022, things picked up again during 2023. According to the annual report from app intelligence provider data.ai, “on the “State of the mobile economy”. The report noted that consumer spending on apps saw a modest 3% year-over-year increase in 2023 to reach $171 billion across the App Store, Google Play, and third-party Android app stores in China. A growing share of that total consumer spending came from apps, not mobile games, thanks in part to the success of TikTok. However, app downloads remained stable last year at 257 billion, an increase of only about 1% year over year.
In 2022, the app economy's relentless growth finally hit a snag in a post-Covid crisis, as consumer spending normalized and a slumping economy caused more people to tighten their wallets. The figures and the derived calculation It even suggests that consumer spending may have also slowed in Apple's App Store, but there are no exact figures because Apple's transaction cut is not a flat 30% across the board.
Last year, things moved in a positive direction again, as described by data.ai.
Consumer spending on non-gaming apps grew 11% in 2023 to reach 64 billion of dollars. The social apps and the creator economy fueled this growth, with TikTok helping to lead the way. Last year, the short-form video app reached a new milestone of more than $10.000 billion in user spending, for example, becoming the first non-gaming app to do so. This year, data.ai predicts that consumer monetization on social apps will grow 150% to 1.300 billion of dollars.
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Elsewhere, more than 1.500 apps and games generated more than $10 million in 2023, while 219 surpassed $100 million and 13 surpassed $1.000 billion. Four new apps reached $XNUMX billion in the year: Royal Match, Google One, Max and Gardenscapes.
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The company also cited advances in generative AI as helps drive consumer spending last year. The genAI app market grew sevenfold, creating new AI-enabled consumer experiences such as chatbots and art generators. The top apps included ChatGPT, Ask AI, and Open Chat, in terms of consumer spending. Data.ai noted that the popularity of AI applications was “quite global,” but the genre was not among emerging genres in China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
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To capitalize on consumer demand, more than 4.000 apps added the word “chatbot” to their descriptions and more than 3.500 added “gpt,” according to data.ai feedback. Additionally, 2.500 apps were launched in 2023 with “chatbot” in their description, which the company says is nearly double the apps launched in the previous four years combined.
Apart from its own AI applications, other applications that adopted Artificial Intelligence functions also performed well in 2023.
20 apps that added such features saw 11% year-over-year growth in downloads, data.ai found. 13 of the 20 (65%) also experienced positive growth.
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The report also delved into other metrics of the health of the app ecosystem, including installs, time spent, ad spend, and game-specific details, among other aspects.
Last year, China overtook India (No. 2) and the United States (No. 3) in app installations, while Bangladesh emerged as the fastest-growing market. App subgenres include types such as utilities, productivity, shopping, entertainment, photos, and videos.
Image credits: date.ai
Image credits: date.ai
The report also shows that hours spent peaked at $5,1 trillion, up 6% year over year, while mobile advertising spending is projected to reach $362 billion this year, up of 8%. The forecast for 2024 will see a greater jump of 16,2% to reach 402 thousand millones dollars, data.ai estimates, as ad spending recovers from slower growth in 2023.
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Meanwhile, in the top 10 markets, the average daily hours spent on mobile devices per user grew 6% from 2022 to more than 5 hours. In this case, applications such as YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, Chrome, Instagram, Netflix and others helped increase the time spent.
Image credits: date.ai
Image credits: date.ai
However, mobile gaming did not fare as well in 2023, as spending fell 2% to $107 billion. Game downloads were roughly in line with previous years, accounting for 88 billion out of a total of 257 billion. The main genres included Hypercasual, Simulation and Action. Among the most notable games of the year are Monopoly GO and EA Sports FC Mobile Soccer. In another section, Genshin Impact exceeded $4 billion in expenses. Games like Block Blast Adventure Master and Attack Hole boosted downloads, amid surprise hits like Avatar Life. Gacha Life 2 and Eggy Party also made big gains in downloads and usage.
Image credits: date.ai
Image credits: date.ai
Other 2023 trends saw Chinese shopping apps like Temu and Shein grow 140% as they hit Western markets, while time spent on social and entertainment apps grew 12% to 3 trillion hours. In the latter, spending growth of 10% was also recorded, up to $29.000 billion.
Post-pandemic trends also continued, as travel app downloads grew 13%, driven by travel-related services (26%), reservations (80%), and flight-specific reservations (43%). Similarly, ticketing apps were up 31%, thanks to big concerts by Taylor Swift and Beyonce, a 66% increase from pre-pandemic levels.
The full report breaks down the top apps and games at the country level into metrics such as installs, spend and time, and drills down into individual sectors such as finance, retail, video streaming, social media, food and drink, travel, health and fitness, sports and more. .
Globally, the top app by installs and spend was TikTok, but Facebook remained number one by time spent. The top games were Subway Surfers (downloads), Candy Crush Saga (spends), and Roblox (monthly active users).
Image credits: date.ai
Image credits: date.ai
