Also because of the pandemic in 2020, app purchases grew by 25%, here’s how much we spent in total and what were the most downloaded apps.
The year 2020, which just ended, was a breakout year for mobile: the pandemic forced half the world to stay home for months and, even now in early 2021, the situation hasn’t improved much. The twelve months we have behind us saw a boom in smartworking, but also strong growth in entertainment app downloads.
This, according to data collected by App Annie, translated into double-digit growth in global spending to buy smartphone apps: up 25% in 2020 compared to 2019. Even greater was the growth in the number of app downloads: +30%. Numbers that are absolutely remarkable because we are not talking about a young market, a novelty that has just arrived. The app economy, on the contrary, has existed for at least a decade and such a strong growth in downloads and spending on app stores (both Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, albeit with different percentages) has not been seen for years. So here’s how much money was spent worldwide last year on apps and what were the top 10 most downloaded apps of 2020.
How much apps cost us in 2020
If we want to know how much we spent last year on using mobile apps, we need to calculate both spending on apps alone and in-app purchases after downloading (especially common for game apps).
App Annie’s data, which is still not definitive because it was updated in November and has forecasts at the end of December, says that 2020 ended with global spending on app stores reaching $112 billion.
Of that $112 billion, most of it, about $70 billion, was spent on the iOS App Store while just over $40 billion was spent on the Google Play Store for Android apps. iOS, then, confirms itself as a gold mine for Apple, which, as is well known, takes a robust percentage on both initial app purchases and subsequent in-app purchases.
However, App Annie also notes a 30% growth in spending on the Google Play Store. A sign that even Android users are starting to consider the idea that not all apps have to be free.
The most downloaded apps of 2020
App Annie’s report also tells us that there were 130 million app downloads in 2020 from both stores, 10% more than the 2019 number, and that we spent 3.3 trillion hours in front of Android apps last year (up 25% year-over-year, with growth largely due to video calling and video conferencing).
Ma, soprattutto, App Annie ci dice quali sono state le app più scaricate nel 2020. Una di esse, la prima in assoluto, è la vera vincitrice del 2020 nonostante abbia avuto un anno tutt’altro che facile: TikTok.
Ecco la classifica delle prime 10 app più scaricate al mondo nel 2020:
- TikTok
- WhatsApp Messenger
- Zoom Cloud Meetings
- Facebook Messenger
- Google Meet
- Snapchat
- Telegram
- Likee