COVID-19 drives first-half mobile app spending to $50b

The global pandemic "has changed consumer behavior on mobile forever," according to App Annie.
The mobile analytics firm today released its first-half consumer behavior report, detailing how consumers used their phones more often -- and for more reasons -- as COVID-19 spread around the world.
In the first half of 2020, iOS and Google Play apps and games were downloaded 64 billion times, an increase of 5% year-over-year and 10% from the back half of 2019. Consumer spending over the first half was greater than $50 billion, also up 10% from the second half of 2019.
People were also spending more time on their phones, with App Annie finding the average daily hours spent on Android phones jumped as countries began locking down.
In Russia, the second quarter average time spent on Android phones was 3.5 hours a day, up 40% compared to 2019's average. Canada (up 39%) and India (up 37%) were also among the countries seeing significant increases in time spent on mobile.
Many of the countries App Annie looked at are continuing to see growing engagement, but two countries that dealt with the pandemic early on -- South Korea and China -- saw time spent on Android dipped in the second quarter compared to the first.

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