On Tuesday, App Annie debuted their latest report, “2016 Retrospective”. And in this report they take a look at a lot of the app trends in 2016, as well as how Pokemon GO took over the world in the second half of the year. Perhaps what is the most interesting in this report is the fact that 90 billion downloads occurred in 2016, between the Apple App Store and Google Play. That’s 13 billion more downloads than in 2015. Unsurprisingly, this growth was mostly thanks to China, which accounted for about 80% of the growth in 2016, on iOS. Not as much on Android, but a big part of that is the fact that iOS really only came into China in late 2015 with the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus.
In 2016, app developers were paid an astounding $35 billion. That is a 40% increase over 2015, and as if that number wasn’t impressive enough, if you add up third-party Android app stores and advertising revenue, that number jumps to $89 billion in the same year. Emerging markets started using their apps a whole lot more in 2016. Of those emerging markets, India topped them all. They spent nearly 150 billion hours using apps on their phones in 2016, meanwhile the US didn’t even crack 100 billion hours. India’s app downloads actually almost doubled in 2016, matching the number of the US, at just over 6 billion. Now it’s important to note that these numbers come from Google Play, and that means that China is left out seeing as they do not have the Google Play Store. If China were part of this set of data, the numbers would be vastly different, at least on the charts.
When it comes to video streaming, App Annie found out that many people would rather use an in-app purchase to pay for streaming, rather than using a credit card that the service may have on file. Additionally, video streaming revenue more than doubled in the US in 2016, while China saw the revenue jump 3.7 times, to about $140 million. In the US, the top five video streaming services were YouTube, Netflix, ESPN, CNN and Amazon Video. It was a bit surprising to see CNN come in at number four, but with 2016 being an election year, that is likely why they were so high.
If you read the reports following the holiday shopping season, you’d know that many people used their smartphones to shop. But just how many? According to App Annie, the 2016 holiday shopping season saw a 30% growth in mobile shopping over 2015. It is important to note that they were comparing November 2015 to November 2016, and not the entire shopping season. App Annie’s data on Pokemon GO does indeed show that they peaked during their Halloween game event, and then usage started to decline once again. They also noted that Pokemon GO’s popularity seemingly did not eat into other games’ revenue. Which is something that other reports have hinted at. If you are interested in the full report, you can check it out on App Annie’s website, which is linked in the source section below.
