Tanushree Basuroy
Research expert covering India
The Indian app market - statistics & facts
The average Indian user spent roughly four hours daily using mobile internet given the near monopoly held by Android OS across the Asian continent affording cheap smartphones and mobile data plans. In combination with the Indian government’s drive to completely digitalize the economy, Indians were heavily reliant on their smartphones and mobile apps to carry out everyday activities. Thus, the country was among the leading markets worldwide in terms of mobile app downloads, second only to China as of 2022.
Non-gaming apps constituted the bulk of apps developed in India. The country’s flourishing fintech ecosystem resulted in an abundance of apps, such as Paytm and PhonePe, being deployed for mobile payments, banking, investment, and other financial services. As part of the Digital India scheme, developing apps to facilitate e-governance was a focal point for the Indian government over the last few years. On the online shopping front, Flipkart and Myntra continued to be household names.
Besides these, ‘media and entertainment’ was another popular mobile app category. With Chinese-made apps like TikTok being banned in the country, content creators and users switched to homegrown short-form video platforms such as Moj. Other forms of entertainment included video and audio streaming on Indian apps that were cheaper than global platforms such as Netflix and Spotify and provided content in a variety of Indian languages. Meanwhile, gaming apps such as Ludo King and Candy Shooter were a massive hit with Indian mobile users. Gametion Technologies was the leading mobile game publisher, accruing over 800 million downloads as of 2022.
Mobile app development and usage
Not only is the South Asian giant a voracious consumer of apps but is also teeming with a significant number of app developers. Google Play Store alone hosted approximately 158 thousand apps developed by over 30 thousand Indian app publishers. Due to the high penetration of Android phones, publishers prioritized Google Play over Apple Store to launch their apps. Developers such as Samsung R&D Institute and Smart Media4U were the most popular, in terms of the number of app installations.Non-gaming apps constituted the bulk of apps developed in India. The country’s flourishing fintech ecosystem resulted in an abundance of apps, such as Paytm and PhonePe, being deployed for mobile payments, banking, investment, and other financial services. As part of the Digital India scheme, developing apps to facilitate e-governance was a focal point for the Indian government over the last few years. On the online shopping front, Flipkart and Myntra continued to be household names.
Besides these, ‘media and entertainment’ was another popular mobile app category. With Chinese-made apps like TikTok being banned in the country, content creators and users switched to homegrown short-form video platforms such as Moj. Other forms of entertainment included video and audio streaming on Indian apps that were cheaper than global platforms such as Netflix and Spotify and provided content in a variety of Indian languages. Meanwhile, gaming apps such as Ludo King and Candy Shooter were a massive hit with Indian mobile users. Gametion Technologies was the leading mobile game publisher, accruing over 800 million downloads as of 2022.
India’s thriving IT industry
Over the years, India has been recognized as a global IT destination with cities such as Bengaluru, New Delhi, and Hyderabad serving as the main tech hubs. Its considerable population of software engineers and IT graduates has propelled technological innovation both at home and in Silicon Valley. Along with a robust startup environment, initiatives such as Make in India and Skill India helped boost both the skills and employment of IT professionals.
