Skip to main content

How are Google Play and The App Store performing against each other?  How many are internet enabled in China? How many 4G connections are up and running in India?

You’ll find the answers to these and many more mobile data related questions in this week’s MEF market stats round up…

56 per cent of US adults bought a product using an app in 2015

More than half of all US adults are now using their phones to buy products and services, says a study of mobile commerce habits by Verizon.

56 per cent purchased something from an app in 2015, with 23 per cent doing so for the first time. Meanwhile 70 per cent of millennials (18-34) did some mobile shopping – an 85 per cent increase on 2014.

The report illustrates just how mainstream smartphone commerce and financial management has become. It also revealed 55 per cent of smartphone owners made a mobile banking transaction using an app, while 22 per cent ordered a taxi.

Read more…

Google Play growing faster than Apple App Store – but iOS is where the money is

A new report by app tracker App Annie says the Google Play Store is bigger than ever. However, Android developers still struggle to monetise.

App Annie found Google Play Store downloads were almost double those of the Apple App Store in 2015. This was due to Android’s dominance in emerging markets like Brazil, Turkey, India, Indonesia and Mexico.

Such countries accounted for almost half of the app store’s growth, according to the report. App Store downloads, on the other hand, appeared to be relatively unchanged from this time last year.

Despite this, Apple’s App Store made 75 per cent more revenue than Google Play. And the number is going up. In 2014 it was 70 per cent.

Read more…

688 million Chinese citizens are connected to the internet

The number of Chinese ‘netizens’ surged by 39 million in 2015. It means that as of December 2015, more than half of China’s population was connected.

The stats were revealed by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), which also disclosed that 90.1 per cent of Chinese people are linked to the web via their smartphones.

In fact, there are 620 million phone users in China, and those accessing the Internet purely through their phones reached 127 million – that’s 18.5 per cent of all Internet users.

Read more…

50 million 4G phones to ship in India this year

The market for high end smartphones in India is booming, says a new report from CyberMedia Research.

It said the smartphone segment grew 32 per cent in 2015 to deliver around 95 million device shipments. Ongoing growth will drive sales of 50m 4G devices in 2016.

Overall, Indians will buy 250 million units this year. Falling prices are driving demand; in 2015, three out of four smartphones cost Rs 10,000 ($150) or less, the report said. And CMR believes the Rs 5,000 segment is also likely to increase this year.

Read more…

Mobile powering $2.1 trillion annual e-commerce spend on payment cards

Online spend using payment cards will grow up to $5 trillion in the next four years, says research firm RBR.

Its Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2020 report says e-commerce now represents 11 per cent of the $20 trillion spent on payment cards. But the growth of smartphone-based spending will push this to 13 per cent of the total $38 trillion card spend projected in 2020.

Despite this boom, RBR also notes the importance of alternative payment methods such as PayPal and cash on delivery, which are popular in specific regions.

The report says: “In several countries in central and eastern Europe, a significant proportion of online shoppers prefer to pay by cash on delivery to enable them to inspect the quality of the goods they are purchasing before making payment.”

Read more…

Google controls 64.8 per cent of US search volume

Two thirds of all desktop searches go through Google, says comScore – down 0.6 per cent in a year.

The stats show Google’s market share fell from 65.4 per cent to 64.8 per cent in a year. Bing was the main beneficiary. It was at 19.7 per cent in 2014. Now it’s at 21.1 per cent.

However, the numbers don’t include mobile search. And this is a major omission given that PC queries were down by 1.2 billion in the year. One can assume Google powers more mobile search than either Bing and Yahoo.

Read more…

MEF