Indians spend nearly 5 hrs daily on mobiles in 2021

CHENNAI: Indians spent almost a third of their waking hours on their mobiles in 2021, thanks to the impact of the

pandemic

on

digital habits

. The average hours spent on a mobile per day per user surged by around 4.5% from 3.7 hours in 2019 to 4.7 hours in 2021, according to data from global app intelligence firm AppAnnie sourced by TOI. The time spent on mobiles in 2020 had stood at 4.5 hours per day. Overall, India saw 655 billion hours spent on mobiles in 2021 (on Android phones) - a 37% increase since 2019 (381 billion hours).

India stood at fifth place globally in terms of time spent on mobiles after Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea and Mexico. Users in the top three countries surpassed five hours per day on mobile apps.

"Year 2021 was another blockbuster in mobile, following a pandemic-induced catalyst to

mobile habits

in 2020. We saw the average user in the most mobile-first markets spend 4.8 hours a day, equating to nearly one-third of waking hours - up 30% from pre-Covid levels," AppAnnie head (insights) Lexi Sydow said.

Consumers in India spent an annual 7.6 billion hours on shopping apps - a 16% year-on-year (YoY) growth from 2020, and 80% overall growth since 2018 (4.2 billion hours). The biggest gainer among social networks was Meta-owned photo- and video-sharing app Instagram, where users spent an average 13 hours every month - a 32% YoY growth from 9.8 hours in 2020. Indians spent an average 19.8 hours every month on WhatsApp, a marginal 1.5% dip from 2020 but an overall 3.1% growth since 2018.

India continues to be in the second spot in terms of the largest

app downloads

market after China. AppAnnie's 'State of Mobile Report 2022' showed that India clocked over 26.6 billion app downloads in 2021- around 40% growth from 2019 when annual new installs was 18.9 billion downloads, and 10% growth from 2020 when it was 24.3 billion. Gaming and finance contributed to the spike in app downloads as India witnessed an 85% growth in downloads in 2021 at 9.3 billion downloads, in comparison with 2018.

Downloads of finance apps grew from 0.5 billion in 2018 to 1.1 billion in 2021. Interestingly, downloads of health and fitness apps peaked during the pandemic's onset in Q2 of 2020 at 115.4 million. However, monetisation remains a work-in-progress in the country as India did not feature even in the top 20 markets globally when it comes to consumer spends.

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