Consumers spent a record $28 billion on apps in the third quarter

Shawn Knight

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Staff member
In brief: Mobile usage soared during the first wave of Covid-19 and as we settle into the second half of 2020, the trend doesn’t appear to be shifting. In each month during the third quarter (from July through September), consumers spent in excess of 180 billion hours using mobile apps. That’s an increase of 25 percent worldwide compared to the same three-month period in 2019.

Downloads from the App Store grew 20 percent year over year to nearly nine billion during the quarter while Google Play saw downloads increase 10 percent to 25 billion. In total, consumers downloaded a staggering 33 billion new apps in Q3.

Unsurprisingly, Q3 2020 was also the largest quarter to date for mobile app spending. According to App Annie, iOS spending was up 20 percent year over year and 35 percent on Android.

Collectively, end users shelled out some $28 billion on mobile apps over the past three months.

Entertainment, social media and communications apps topped the leaderboard in Q3, with TikTok being the most downloaded app of the season followed by Facebook, WhatsApp and Zoom, in that order. In terms of total monthly active users, it was a clean sweep for Facebook as the company’s main app, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram were at the top of the heap.

As we enter the final stretch of the year and facing what could be a second wave of Covid-19, there’s little reason to think the numbers will stray far from what we’ve seen for much of 2020.

Masthead credit: LDprod

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I typically don't spend money on apps. It takes a tremendous amount of desire for me to do so.

And I certainly don't have apps with subscription-services.
 
I spent a grand total of $0 on Apps myself......No real need to buy apps when either a free one or a web browser works just fine.
 
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