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Mobile Apps in 2024: To Develop or Not To Develop?
December 16, 2022
12 min
When preparing your digital marketing strategy for 2024, you need profound industry analysis, meaningful statistics, and credible forecasts for future trends.
Considering the fact that the app market size reached an impressive level of $206.73 billion in 2022, and is estimated to enhance by 13.4% by 2030, the importance of the mobile app trends grows stably.
That is why we have developed a detailed, profound app market analysis with reliable forecasts for the future mobile app industry trends. We believe that it will become extremely useful for you when creating your mobile app business plan in 2024.
First of all, it is essential to outline that the global app market is developing rather fast. For instance, in 2016, people downloaded 140.68 billion mobile apps. On the contrary, the criterion hit 230 billion downloads in 2021. The tendency of apps downloads statistics will remain positive in 2024, which will provide remarkable opportunities for app developers, owners, and advertisers.
Despite fast development, the app market is also highly profitable. Its revenue reached $430.90 billion in 2022 and is estimated to grow by 9.27%, resulting in $614.40 billion by 2026. That is why the segment will remain promising for its players in the future.
Considering the mobile app industry has a rapid pace of development, its structure is becoming more and more complicated. So, let’s view the app market categories.
Even though some devices already have pre-installed apps, the largest share is downloaded from mobile app stores. Undoubtedly, Google Play Store for Android devices and the Apple App Store for iOS devices are the absolute leaders of the app market. Besides, Amazon Appstore is the third promising app distributor.
Google Play holds the largest share of the app market structure, according to the downloads number. For instance, Google Play Store had 111 billion downloads, while the App Store reached only 33 billion in 2021. Besides, the share of Google Play mobile app downloads is estimated to increase in the future.
An interesting fact is that the Apple App Store holds market leadership in revenue, generating $21.2 billion in consumer spending on apps in the third quarter of 2022. Besides, the Apple App Store is also forecasted to keep growing in revenue, reaching $161 billion by 2026. Hence, focus on all three marketplaces, namely Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and Amazon Appstore, distributing your applications.
In case you have problems with the app promotion, the Promodo team has proven its expertise in the applications’ implementation and promotion. For instance, we have improved the keyword indexing and position on Google Play Store by 76% for Dodam within only in two months.
If you are also looking for such results, we are here to help you.
The mobile app market is rather diverse. A wide range of businesses invests in app creation to strengthen brand awareness, improve customer loyalty, grow sales, etc. That is why the spectrum of app categories includes games, social networks, entertainment, photo & video, music, productivity, books, education, sports, health, shopping, weather, mobile eCommerce apps, and others. Nevertheless, viewing the app market as a business opportunity, let’s discuss the app niches that generate the most revenue and have the highest growth potential.
Games are definitely the most profitable niche in the mobile app market, which generated $252,240 million in 2021. The share of game applications is considerably bigger than others. Besides, it also tends to have stable growth. Social networking and entertainment are in the top three most profitable app mobile categories, having $39,594 million and $26,982 million in revenue respectively. If you are considering entering the global mobile apps market, you may also view photos & videos, lifestyle, music, or productivity categories that are also in the list of most profitable apps.
Even though we have determined the most profitable mobile app categories, they are still rather complicated to compete in, due to the huge amount of competitors. That is why we have outlined the range of app market niches that are poised for growth in 2023. They have a lower industry rivalry and remarkable growth prospects n the future.
In the global marketplace, attraction & tour booking and ticket services are to boost in 2023 because they are estimated to demonstrate an almost 300% increase in engagement hours and more than 150% growth in downloads. If you are a participant in the tourism industry, it’s definitely high time for you to invest in the application launch.
Analyzing the app mobile market, it is also essential to view the most successful applications in the market. However, also take into account the fact that people that have gadgets on Android and iOS pay for different types of apps.
The most profitable app for iPhone is Tinder, which brings $37.58 million to its owner Match Group, Inc. The list of top iPhone apps by revenue also includes TikTok, Honor of Kings, Candy Crush Saga, Puzzle & Dragons, etc.
Regarding Android’s most-grossing apps, the absolute leader by revenue is the mobile game Coin Master, which generated $47.96 million for its owners in September 2022. TikTok and Candy Crush Saga are also in the top three positions in the ranking.
In-app ads are an effective mobile advertising strategy applied to bring traffic, leads, and revenues by marketing on apps. Mobile app advertising is a digital marketing tool that is highly popular nowadays. In 2022, the global mobile ads spending is to reach $336 billion, which is 14% more than the previous year. The in-app advertising value is planned to increase by an additional 7.5% in 2023, hitting the level of $362 billion. That is why mobile advertising is another promising income source for your app business model in 2023.
As the number of B2C apps is considerably higher than the number of B2B applications, user behavior patterns are an essential issue to analyze. One of the positive trends in 2023 for app businesses is the increased time spent on mobile. For instance, in 2028, global consumers are estimated to spend 5.5 trillion hours on mobile devices, which is almost twice as much as in 2021. Hence, it will create beneficial conditions for the app businesses’ development from a long-term perspective.
Users spend their time mostly in social applications, approximately 55 minutes per day. The average daily time spent, playing games on mobile apps is 16.7 minutes. Shipping, sports, and entertainment capture slightly more than 13 minutes of users’ daily attention. The top list also includes the travel and finance categories.
Launching a new application to the market, you should also consider that the average time spent on mobile apps differs from season to season. For instance, the 4th quarter is the most favorable for the app owners. Probably, it deals with unfavorable weather starting in October, which motivates people to stay at home and spend time on their mobile applications.
Summing up, the mobile app market has favorable prospects for successful development in 2024. However, at the same time, an effective app business also requires a comprehensive and coherent marketing approach.
Team Lead of Content for promodo.com
Content marketing manager at Promodo with 7+ years of writing.
When creating valuable business content, I always seek fresh data, interesting facts, the expertise of professionals, and meaningful insights to bring relevant ideas to the audience. I believe that good content can enrich the experience of marketers, empower business owners to make data-driven decisions, and enhance companies in growth.
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