The State of Mobile in 2023

Where is mobile going in 2023? The question is an important one for app developers and their clients. Data.ai’s latest industry report, The State of Mobile 2023, provides some key insights into how mobile developed during 2022 and what we can expect from the technology in 2023. Some of the data is surprising, while other facts are more or less what one might expect. All of the intelligence gathered by the platform points toward a robust and expansive future for mobile technology.

Macro mobile trends

At a glance, data.ai's analysis reveals that 2022 was a year of substantial growth for mobile. There were a total of 255 billion new app downloads globally, an 11% increase over the previous year. On the whole, users spent 3% more time per day on mobile apps than they did in 2021 - an average of five hours per day. In total, global users spent 4.1 trillion hours on their mobile devices in 2022 - a growth of 9%. An interesting fact for marketers and advertisers is that mobile ad spend increased by 14% - a grand total of $336 billion.

Interestingly, while downloads and time spent are on the increase, consumer spending via mobile actually dropped by 2% in 2022. Nonetheless, even as consumer spending diminished, business spending, particularly in the sphere of marketing, is on the rise. Marketers are aware that consumers spend a great deal of time with their eyes fixed on their mobile apps, making them a captive audience. Mobile is set to take an increasingly larger share of global advertising wallets. 

It is no longer enough to provide a banking app with all the features that users expect. Customers are looking for fresh, new features that take their user experience beyond the typical account balance updates, mobile check deposits, and push notifications. 

Monopolies on time and spending

data.ai examined app downloads and usage across a variety of categories. The numbers show that mobile usage is by no means evenly distributed. The top 20 global app subgenres accounted for 50% of downloads. Three of the targeted categories accounted for 50% of the time consumers spend on mobile apps: Entertainment/OTT, Utility & Productivity - Personalization, Utility & Productivity - Tools. In terms of consumer spending, only six categories made up half of the global total. Video-streaming apps were the clear winners in terms of both downloads and consumer spending. OTT apps claimed 16% of all the dollars spent on in-app subscriptions and purchases.

Gaming declines, Apps hold firm

All of the changes in spending that took place in 2022 occurred in the face of a tightening macroeconomic squeeze. Consumers and businesses have less to spend, and it is interesting to see where they are allocating their diminished budgets. Perhaps not surprisingly, games took the biggest hit in 2022, while apps that offer consumers more essential functions and services, were more resilient. Despite what data.ai refers to as strong economic headwinds, non-gaming apps actually saw significant growth. The most downloaded apps were mobile cleaners and antivirus packages, while entertainment apps took the largest share of both time and money spent by consumers around the world.

Finance and banking

Mobile app adoption for the financial sector saw rapid growth throughout 2022. Mobile banking, digital wallets and personal loans were the leading categories in the sector. This is a trend that began at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and has continued unabated for the past two years. Economic concerns such as high inflation are driving the adoption of personal loan apps, while ongoing refinements in personal banking apps are making it more convenient for consumers to conduct financial business on their mobile devices. As the report sums it up, consumers love to bank on mobile.

Although the number of downloads of apps related to conventional banking and currencies increased in 2022, Cryptocurrency Trading apps saw a marked downturn. The extreme volatility of cryptocurrency markets during the year has evidently deterred consumers from trading and speculating in them. It is uncertain how this trend will progress in the coming year, especially considering the recent extended run of growth in the value of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptos.

Fintech differs from the rest of the mobile app market in one very important aspect: it remains highly localized. This makes sense, as customers mostly download and use the apps created by the specific local banks at which they hold accounts. Since banking rules differ between territories, local app designers have an advantage when it comes to offering their development services to banks. Knowing the local market is thus a huge advantage for app-development companies.

Another notable point in the Finance section of the data.ai report is that app development has been the driver of fierce competition among banking institutions. On the one hand, traditional banks still hold the largest share of the market, but so-called “Neobanks” have grown their share largely through their more advanced mastery of app digital banking and user engagement. In order to maintain their dominance, traditional banks have had to devote more of their resources to innovative app development.

Retail

App shopping is on the rise. Between 2019 and 2022, the amount of time consumers spent on shopping apps increased from 60 billion to around 120 billion. Despite this long-term doubling in the time spent on these apps, the rate of growth has actually slowed year-on-year. It grew by 31% in 2020, 19% in 2021, and around 9% in 2022. Emerging markets such as India and Indonesia, as well as LATAM countries, led by Brazil, were among the top growth markets in this sector in 2022.

Whereas the growth in mobile shopping in 2020 was primarily the result of the pandemic and its restrictions on in-person shopping, the continued growth in 2022 seems to have resulted from consumers’ response to high inflation. As in-person shopping returned in 2022, shoppers found that their dollars were not stretching as far as they used to. Consumers turned to mobile apps for cost-cutting measures. Downloads of coupon and reward apps increased by 27% between 2021 and 2022. BNPL apps also rose in popularity as shoppers looked for easy credit and delayed payment solutions. In fact, this was the fastest-growing category in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa. Consider the contrast with 2020, when the fastest growing category was Pharmacy and Drugstore apps.