Data.ai: How the app world has changed during the pandemic

The last few years have been … something. Since the early 2020 Covid shutdown, much of the world has changed how it operates. Supply chain constraints and crippling inflation, as well as a pandemic, have kept people home. Once you’ve done all your personal projects and watched all the Netflix, what’s left?

People are social creatures and crave interactions with other humans. So, when you can’t spend time with your family and friends, you do the next best thing — use your phone to play games and stay connected. This new report by data.ai shows us how the average person spends their phone time.

App usage via hours per day

When I was a kid, they told us video games would rot our brains. They may have been right. But, what would our parents make of the average daily hours spent in apps metric? It would probably be a disapproving silence.

Time spent on phones in apps, for most markets, has been on a steady rise for years. Indonesia takes the top spot for Q1 2022, edging towards the 6 daily hour mark, with Brazil right behind. South Korea and Mexico also hit the 5 hours mark, making the top 4 markets all using apps at least 5 hours a day.

All of the top 12 markets spend more than 4 hours a day on their phones and have shown growth. China is the only outlier with a decrease in time used by 10%.

App Downloads

Now that we’ve looked at the amount of time that people spend in apps, lets take a look at what they’re doing with their time.

Year after Year, the top 4 apps stay the same. We always see Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and WhatsApp Messenger as the most popular apps worldwide. The only change we have in this particular chart is the inclusion of Snapchat at the #5 spot.

One inclusion of note in the competitive video streaming space is HBO Max claiming the #5 spot in the US. Taking on competitors like Disney+ and Netflix, HBO Max revealed it has 46.8 million subscribers (including both cable and streaming).

Gaming Downloads

Well, here we are. Finally getting down to the nitty gritty. Let’s take a look at the top games for Q1 2022.

In the worldwide market, we haven’t seen much change. Free Fire, Subway Surfers, Roblox, and Candy Crush Saga are not exactly new to the world. The one interesting inclusion, which you can also see tops the data.ai Breakout Games chart, is Merge & Fight.

In the regional markets, Wordle by Goldfinch Studios has had a great few months. Between the popularity of Wordle, the word game bought by the New York Times, Wordle by Goldfinch received a huge influx of searches and subsequent downloads.

Breakout Apps and Games

Released in January of 2022, Merge & Fight, published by Homa games, has been a huge success. In this game you merge dinosaurs to make tougher dinosaurs to take on enemy monsters, dragons, and other dinosaurs.

Another interesting inclusion also launched in January. Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel was the #1 top downloaded game in Japan. The game, which is based on the popular Yu-Gi-Oh card game, also topped Japan’s breakout games download chart.

The breakout apps chart is full of apps that help people with their day to day life or to just stay connected. One app of interest, Locket Widget, showed up in the top 5 Q1 downloads for the UK, US, France, and Singapore. The app allows you to see photos from friends as your lock screen on your phone. If you can’t spend a lot of times with your friends, at least you can see what they’re up to!

Otherwise, the Breakout Apps chart is mostly utilities and helpers. Among these are a number of private browsers, work from home utilities, and tax apps.

For more information and cool charts about apps, check out data.ai.