Chinese apps market share falls to 29% amid Sino-India standoff, says AppsFlyer

New Delhi: The border row between India and China in the eastern Ladakh has given the rise to local developers who helped Indian apps to tap a larger chunk of the overall market at the cost of Chinese options, said a newspaper citing a report by analytics firm AppsFlyer.

According to the report, the share of installs of Chinese apps slipped to 29% in 2020 from 38% in 2019. Indian apps took advantage of this opportunity and dominated the install volume with a 39% share in 2020.

Sanjay Trisal, country manager, AppsFlyer India, told TOI, “With app marketers increasingly expanding their remit to cover tier-2 and tier-3 regions, the demand from semi-urban areas is firing up India’s app consumption. In this highly diverse and fragmented marketplace, personalised content is critical to engage and retain customers.” 

Not only India, but the opportunity was also captured by apps from Israel, the US, Russia, and Germany, said the report, adding that these nations also made further inroads into India’s rapidly growing app market.

Accordingly, states with semi-urban areas emerged as the sweet spot for mobile usage, and around 85% of app installs came from tier-2 and tire-3 cities. 

The report further said that dependency on apps increased as people were spending more time at home, thereby, but users had more time to declutter their phones and remove unwanted apps. It also leads to a dipping in the retention rate--the number of users using the app after a certain number of days, and the day-1 uninstall rates increased.

This year, the overall retention rate for an average app across verticals fell by around 12% as marketing budgets were slashed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, said the report said, adding that the retention rate of apps on day one was at 22.3% but this dipped to 1.7% by day 30.

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It further said that Indian users continued to prefer apps that take up less space on phones, consume less data, and are more seamless to use in spotty connectivity. 

Overall, day-1 uninstall rates stood at 27% in comparison to 26% of the last year. This was higher for gaming, food, and finance apps at 32%, 32% and 30%, respectively.

According to AppsFlyer’s analysis, India recorded 7.3 billion installs between January 1 and November 30, 2020, covering 4,519 apps across verticals.