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The mobile market turned the tide in 2023 driven by the creator economy and subscriptions and is looking stronger than ever entering 2024. data.ai’s State of Mobile 2024 Report reveals that mobile made a comeback after a one-year market slowdown.
In 2023, consumer spending hit a new high at $171 billion (+3% YoY) following a 2% YoY dip in 2022.
The mobile app economy is now a half-a-trillion-dollar market, with nearly $1.5 billion in spending each day in 2023 across app store spend and mobile ad spend. This included $362 billion in mobile ad spend, an 8% YoY increase.
Revenue wasn’t the only metric that performed well in 2023 – downloads and time spent also saw strong growth to new all-time highs. Hours spent peaked at 5.1 trillion (+6% YoY). Meanwhile, downloads remained flat at 257 billion (+1% YoY).
The uptick in app store spend is particularly notable given the unprecedented decline in 2022, which was largely driven by mobile gaming.
While the outlook for games and apps alike looks better entering 2024, consumer spend on apps will continue to drive the bulk of the growth, something that seemed impossible just 10 years ago.
Mobile Payments & Finance
Mobile app adoption across top subgenres like Mobile Banking and Digital Wallets & Payment continued to climb as consumers continue to turn to their mobile devices more than ever for their finance needs.
Meanwhile, Personal Loans app adoption remained strong as economic headwinds continued in 2023. The prevalence is highly regional, however, with much of the growth driven by markets like India, Indonesia, and Mexico.
The dip in Cryptocurrency Trading levelled off in 2023 after seeing a pronounced downturn in 2022. Unsurprisingly, downloads tend to track with the turbulence in the cryptocurrency market.
While most subgenres saw downloads rise along with high inflation over the past few years, no subgenre saw a higher correlation than Personal Loans.
The scale of the growth was also notable — global downloads for Personal Loans apps climbed more than 250% between 2020 and 2023, even outpacing Cryptocurrency’s 238% growth over the same period.
Personal Loans downloads don’t have the highest correlation with inflation in all markets, though it tends to be high throughout. In Europe, for example, Personal Loans apps saw strong growth even though gross totals for the subgenre remained quite low.
Finance Super Apps
In a competitive mobile market, top finance apps have continued to add new features to incentivize customers turning to their app for all finance needs, from mobile banking to sending money to trading in crypto.
Super apps have become particularly popular in China, with Alipay as a prime example.
data.ai’ reveals that all of the top markets have at least one app with four or more of the features listed for Super Apps, and several including the US, UK, China and Brazil have three or more such apps.
These apps tend to be market leaders in the finance space. In fact, these super apps control more than 20% of the Finance monthly active user base in China (47%), the US (32%) and Argentina (24%).
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