With a population of over 1.3 billion, India is sure to present lucrative opportunities for app developers. Increased smartphone adoption and access to unlimited 4G data plans have made India the fastest growing mobile app market. Results for Q2 2019 have been released and India is once again the top country for app downloads. Meanwhile, the United States mobile market is reportedly expected to reach $224B by 2024. Let’s take a closer look at these reports in this week’s Mobile Monday.
India Exceeds 5 Billion App Downloads
Sensor Tower’s Store Intelligence Data Digest for Q2 2019 revealed that India remained as the top country for mobile downloads for both the App Store and Google Play. The country hit a new milestone by exceeding 5 billion total downloads, up from 4.8B in Q1. The United States was next on the list but a bit behind at 3 billion downloads. In this quarter, Indonesia surpassed Russia as the 4th highest country with over 1.5B downloads. Thailand took South Korea’s spot in the top 10 after reaching more than 500M downloads. This quarter demonstrated once again that Asia-Pacific is a significant driver of growth for the overall mobile market.
It should be noted that this list does not include China, where Google Play is not available. China still saw huge numbers with 2.02B downloads from the App Store alone. The U.S. is catching up to China with only 290M downloads between them as opposed to the 690M gap in Q2 2018. The U.S. reached 1.73B downloads, a 14% increase year over year. Japan, Great Britain, and Russia rounded out the top 5 for App Store downloads with each gaining approximately 7% in year over year growth.
5G Drives Huge Growth for Mobile Market
According to GlobalData, the mobile market in the United States is expected to reach $224B by 2024. The data analytics firm stated that this growth is driven by the development of 5G and mobile technologies. “Market penetration and traffic data consumption are set to increase with 97% of the U.S. population expected to own a smartphone by the end of 2024,” said Ivan Maldonado, analyst at the firm.
Most major American wireless carriers have launched or are in the process of launching 5G networks this year, boosting 5G data usage. Incidentally, smartphones user will have to upgrade their device to use the new networks. Global Data predicts that average smartphone monthly data will increase from 12GB in 2019 to 37GB by 2024. They also predict that by 2024, 38% of all mobile subscriptions in the U.S. will be on 5G networks and most of which will be on unlimited data plans. The rapid rise in data consumption is a result of high demand for video and the promotion of unlimited data plans.
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