Mobile apps in 2024
Issue 109 l Eka’s Weekly Roundup (11 Feb 2025)
This is the best time of year for “State Of” reports. We’re looking at SensorTower and RevenueCat’s reports on how mobile apps performed in 2024.
These are very high-level trends and are subject to a some reporting bias, but directionally we are encouraged by the growth in unique app usage, growth in spend per app, and headroom for health & fitness apps more broadly.
TLDR: Apps are doing great!
🗞️ Spending more time & money on apps
People are using & spending more on apps
We’re spending more on apps. Revenue grew +13% in total in-app spend, and +25% YoY in non-games. Note that this is only a small proxy for total mobile app revenue as many apps will funnel users out of the app store for payment, and this will not be captured in the data below.
We also used more apps, about 7 unique apps on average per user (+9% YoY). There’s been talk of app fatigue for a while, but this data seems to suggest that this isn’t the case (though to be sure you’d need to look at engagement per app and see if we’ve maxed out useful time on apps). The +6% growth in hours spent may or may not be dominated by the social incumbents!
UK is a relatively small market for apps (by some metrics)
The UK isn’t even in the top 10 (!) markets for app downloads (15th currently). Time spent looks pretty similar, though Indonesians punch above their weight on time spent relative to downloads (UK is still at no. 15).
When looking at IAP revenue, the UK comes up to sixth while Indonesia & Brazil tail behind (11th and 18th respectively).
Health & fitness is still tiny compared to gaming and social
It’s crazy how relatively small this is still compared to social & gaming. It’s so small that it’s not even on the top list for time spent per sub-genre. Social, search and media just dominate.
We are just so excited at the health & fitness app revolution happening right now and believe that there is huge opportunity to create meaningful engagement with consumers. Of course there is overspend in social and so it’s not a total like-for-like comparison!
Side note - the NHS app is the biggest health & fitness app by download in the UK.
Health & Fitness still outperform LTV (calculated using I assume IAP revenue figures). These numbers are really small and there is likely a lot of bias here, but directionally it feels right that health & fitness are seeing greater amounts of spend.
Interestingly there is also a higher refund rate than average in health, fitness, and education. Japan continues to have its crazy low refund rates (3x lower than other regions (!)).
Enter AI? Chatbots lead the download growth charts
Biggest app growth download sector (+0.6b downloads worldwide). Makes sense given the base was close to 0. For context this includes ChatGPT, Gemini, Doubao (China), Character AI…
Shoutout to Paired & Runna in the portfolio 👏
And to Medly AI who has recently launched their own app!
✍🏽 Week in Impact Articles
Monday: Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains
Tuesday: What's in a name? Why VCs are debating the term 'climate tech'
Wednesday: An overdue idea for making the internet safer just got the funding it needs
Thursday: UK ministers will relax rules to build small nuclear reactors
Friday: Norwegian oil giant cuts green investment in half
📊 3 Key Charts
1. Illustrating how AI could impact the enterprise & the person
2. The cost to train models (inc energy) follows a log linear trend
3. No, climate change isn’t just about warming! See the UK’s chilly start to the year.
🗣️ Review of the Week
👋 Getting in Touch
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This was a really interesting read Estia.. that little stat about > 13% of waking hours is mind blowing