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Posts tagged mobile app stats
India’s Mobile Growth is Through the Roof
Sep 23rd
One of the world’s most populous countries is leading the way as the mobile revolution continues to saturate the globe with mobile devices: India. A recent study by the market research firm Juxt polled an extraordinary number of respondents – 121,311 individuals in 30,066 households across India – and found that the nation now can claim roughly 554.8 million mobile users!
That’s right, there are more mobile users in India than there are people in the United States. And what’s amazing is that this figure was only half as large a few short years ago.
According to the study, these users employ 643.4 million active SIM cards, and there are approximately 773.9 million live SIMs in India. Of these users, 23.8 million individuals access the Internet through a mobile data connection such as GPRS or 3G. More interestingly, a million of those users connect to the Internet exclusively via mobile.
No desktop. No laptop. Just portable, mobile Internet accessed through a handheld device.
The great age of the keyboard and mouse has peaked and is now declining. The new age of touchscreens and miniaturized predictive typing is on the rise, and India is demonstrating the trends quite clearly.
What might surprise you, though, is that a majority of the users who access Internet exclusively through mobile data connections are in rural areas. You might not associate rural communities with being technologically progressive, but in this case, we’re guessing that mobile connections provide convenient access in locations where obtaining a reliable hardwired home connection is difficult. [Commenters, if you’re familiar with the reasons behind these stats, we’d love to hear more!]
Indeed, a slim majority 54% of India’s mobile users live in rural areas. And yet mobile saturation is only at 36% (urban mobile saturation is far more developed, as you might expect, having reached 70%). This means that opportunities for growth among rural mobile users in India are quite robust. For small businesses in India and app developers, the message is clear: the always-growing mobile space is practically begging for increased attention, and rural users should be at the center of your efforts.
What do they want? Well, according to the study, landline users are focused on games, videos, and music, but mobile users are all about communication. Thus, social networking, instant messaging, and e-mail are the favorites of the mobile user. Keeping in touch, it seems, is the most useful feature of mobile devices. And users are keeping in touch more than ever.
The numbers don’t lie. If you ignore mobile, you do so at your peril. The users can’t get enough of it, and if your business focuses on mobile, they won’t be able to get enough of you, either!
224 Million People Now Use Apps
May 1st
A recent post by the app consulting and analysis company Flurry revealed that the monthly number of people using apps now exceeds the number of people using desktops and laptops. Each month, roughly 224 million people now use apps, as opposed to 221 million people that use desktops and laptops.
It’s interesting to compare these growing app audiences with those reached by traditional media outlets. For now, a single television show still reaches far, far more viewers than a single app. For example, the top three television shows, put together, reach an audience of about 50 million people. To reach this same audience via apps, it takes about 500 of the top apps.
This comparison may seem silly, but for businesses and advertisers, there’s a hidden difference that shouldn’t be ignored: apps allow for extraordinary segmentation and targeting. Advertising on prime-time television shows is extremely expensive and usually leads to a fair amount of waste. Viewership is broad, and can include many segments that are not relevant to a particular advertiser. Advertising on apps, in contrast, is cheaper and can deliver a better value if done properly, because a tighter user segment can be targeted.
For these reasons, in-app advertising has become a major channel for business promotion. 88% of all apps downloaded are ad-supported, and total revenue for in-app ads is projected to reach $2 billion this year.
“But wait,” you say, “I hate those little ads in my apps, and I never click them!”
The advertisers have heard you, and their “ads” are changing to adapt to the new medium of apps. As Mashable reports, sponsors are testing a number of strategies to avoid irritating people with their ads, including 1) appearing as a part of game apps themselves, 2) paying viewers for ad views, and 3) making more inventive ads that depart from the old-school static display model (e.g. an ad for the Westin Resorts appeared as a frosted screen, which the user could wipe with a finger to reveal a tropical paradise in the background).
For businesses, the message is clear: the aggregate app audience has hit another milestone of growth, and is quickly becoming a major channel that should not be ignored.
