App Annie: users spent a record amount of time and money on mobile apps in Q3

During July, August and September of this year people around the world spend a cumulative 180+ billion hours using mobile apps, a 25% increase year over year, according to data from App Annie.

The most-used apps are owned by Facebook – the Top 4 include the main Facebook app itself, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. These are followed by Amazon, Twitter, Netflix, Spotify and TikTok. TikTok’s virtual tips made it the second most profitable non-game app.

In-app spending went up 20% year over year to the record sum of $28 billion. Most of that came from Apple’s platform, $18 billion (up 20% YoY), while spending on Google’s platform is up to $10 billion (up 35%).

Users downloaded a total of 33 billion new apps in Q3, 25 billion of which went through the Google Play Store (up 10% YoY) and 9 billion through the Apple App Store (up 20%). Note that there’s some rounding in those numbers and they exclude third-party stores.

Interestingly, the downloads from the Play Store were pretty balanced – 45% games, 55% other apps – while only 30% of iOS software downloads were games.

Even so, the gaming category is by far the most profitable on both platforms – games accounted for 65% of the money spent on the Apple store and 80% on the Play Store.

Subscriptions were the biggest non-gaming money maker, especially in the Entertainment category, which features several new streaming services this year.

Source: Gsmarena