Dating apps up. Fintech down. How is India using apps in the COVID era?

The COVID era will be remembered for many strange things. The impact on personal life is deep and will continue to unravel in the coming years.

As those in the eye of the storm, we can only observe the trends and patterns we see at present.

The mobile app market is seeing its share of fluctuations. These strange times have led to great shifts in user behaviour causing major shifts in certain segments.

If you’re trying to learn how to set up your ecommerce business or start an online venture, it is wise to study key app market trends. They give an insight into how users around the world are behaving. In times like the COVID era, studying trends becomes even more important as they show user reaction to societal changes.

A recent study by Moengage and Apptopia studies app consumer trends in the second quarter of 2020. These trends effectively highlight how people across the world were using mobile apps during lockdowns and isolation.

India is a vital part of the mobile app market. Growing internet penetration and smartphone ubiquity make India a major market for any company with a mobile app.

This piece turns the spotlight on key app trends specific to India and Indian user behaviour in Q2 2020.

Dating

Dating apps were the surprise element of the survey. In India, dating app downloads grew by a whopping 413% in Q2.

Daily app usage (DAU) of dating apps also grew by 397%. The table below highlights how other parts of the world fared

It is not wrong to call the growth in India’s dating app downloads an anomaly from a quantitative standpoint.

From a qualitative perspective, this change can be analysed from a few different perspectives.

India is one of the few countries which remained in near complete lockdown in April and May. It is natural for people to turn to mobile apps in such a time to trigger some kind of social activity.

This social situation when coupled with the lower base of dating app users in India make this stunning rise understandable.

The strong correlation between rising downloads and increasing DAU suggests that people found dating apps a suitable medium to recreate social life in a near-complete lockdown.

Also read: Still not getting enough app downloads? Leverage your traffic using social media

Travel and Hospitality

A lot has been reported and written on the impact of COVID on the travel and hospitality industry. The app download and usage numbers point to an interesting dynamic.

There was a net 15.52% increase in app downloads in the travel and hospitality segment. However, DAU fell by 8.57%.

A similar trend was observable in other parts of the world as well. The table below highlights the same.

Increase in overall downloads and decrease in DAU is peculiar. However, it makes sense when put it in the context of a worldwide pandemic.

Analysts can pick and study the exact reason behind this divergence. Here’s a relatively simple take.

An increase in downloads suggests that people wish to return to normalcy and enjoy the things they used to earlier. Remember Q2 covered much of the summer vacation weeks as well. A decrease in DAU points to reality striking back. People realize traveling is not safe and do not then proceed to not use travel and hospitality apps as often.

This trend is also a ray of hope for many apps and general stakeholders of the travel industry. Increase in downloads also means people remember the joy of traveling and wish to return to the same.

When normalcy arrives, there is hope for them to recover from the setbacks of the COVID era.  Anyone trying to turn a travel WordPress website to Android app can take heart from these numbers.

Also read: The positive impact of building a mobile app for your travel business

Banking and Fintech

Banking and fintech mobile apps saw an overall global increase in Q2 of 2020. However, India remained an aberration from this trend.

App downloads in the banking and fintech segment fell by 4.52% DAU also saw a corresponding drop of -8.33%. The data below shows the trend in other countries. 

India, South-East Asia, and Ocenia buck the overall trend of significant increase in downloads and DAU in banking and fintech. The reasons behind these trends are more obvious than others.

In turbulent times such as this pandemic, most people are likely to avoid significant financial decisions. This causes fintech app downloads and usage to drop in a developing nation like India. Decease in overall transactions and a downward shift in spending is also causing banking apps to fall below the curve.

Besides the Americas region, DAU has only seen a slight increase in some regions and a clear contraction in others.

In conclusion

The app market is seeing major shifts with every passing week in the COVID era. This piece presents some of the most significant and suggestive trends in app consumer trends in India.

The data presented in this piece is taken from Apptopi and Moengage’s Global Mobile Consumer Trends report. You can study all the major trends by downloading the report. The link is given below -

Download: Global Mobile Consumer Trends report

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Created on Sep 17th 2020 04:27. Viewed 762 times.

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