CHENNAI: With majority private capital raised by new-age tech businesses going towards user acquisition and marketing,
Indian apps
managed to claim more installs than key
Chinese
rivals in 2019, despite
TikTok
and PUBG’s global domination. Chinese app downloads dominated Indian ones in 2018.
An analysis of India’s top 200
apps
by install volume, by app intelligence firm
AppsFlyer
, showed that 41% were developed by local developers and firms in 2019 compared to 38% in 2018. The share of Chinese apps dropped to 38% in 2019 from 43% last year.
“Whereas 2018 marked the dramatic rise of Chinese apps in India, the momentum this year has shifted back in favour of local players such as Indian payment apps,” AppsFlyer’s noted. However, the “blue-sky” potential of the Indian market will bring in more foreign competitors in the coming years, the study said.
With 6.5 billion installs in second and third quarter (up to September) of 2019 in India, foreign markets have started to take note of rise of Indian app economy, analysts at AppsFlyer said, adding that the Chinese continue to gain on popularity in categories where they do well such as news, entertainment and gaming.
The rise of app market has also led to growth of non-organic installs (NOI) — app installs arising from a brand’s marketing activity and spends, and not spontaneous. The average NOI per app grew by 38%, with hyper-competitive finance (107%), gaming (51%) and food and drink (51%) categories, spending most to add installs. App retention rates, though on an upward trend from 2018, are still at dismal levels in India, as only two out of 100 apps remain on users’ phones by day 30. In 2019,
retention rate
was 23.4% on day 1 and it fell to 2.6% by day 30. This is an increase from 22.8% and 2.3% in 2018 respectively.
“Retention rate is a function of high competition across categories, quality of apps, and average storage space in an Indian user’s device, among others,” Deepak Abbot, an analyst in the app market, said.