Analysis of the mobile application market

Here are the reasons why we decided to create a mobile application and not just a website where people can get similar services.

Mobile apps offer better personalization

For example we can offer our customers better-personalised service based on their interests, location, usage behaviour, wishes, restrictions, and diseases.

We can also use a mobile application A/B testing tool, you can also test out different experiences of your customers.

Mobile apps can let users choose their preferences from the beginning, based on which users can get custom content. Apps can also track customer engagement and then utilise it to offer custom recommendations and updates to the users. Personalization serves can also help improve the conversion rate of apps.

When users get pampered with personalised content, there are better chances that they will subscribe and continue using theapplicationfor a long time.

It's easy to send notifications

The mobile application notifications are of two types: push and in-app. Both are exciting alternatives for communicating withapplicationusers in a far less intrusive manner than sending them emails for example.

In-app notifications are the notifications that users can only receive when they have opened an app.

Push notifications are those notifications that users can receive regardless of any activity they are doing on their mobile device. Both are helping to reach users in an easy and quick way.

Ability to work offline

Like a website, apps might require internet connectivity to perform most tasks, but here’s the difference: an app can still offer basic content and functionality to users inofflinemode. In addition to that, apps usually can work faster than mobile sites.

Freedom in designing

With all the technological advancements in web design, mobile websites still need to rely onbrowsers to perform even the most elementary functions. Mobile apps, however, don’t have any of these restrictions.

Users spend more time on applications

Mobile users spend 88% of their time on mobile apps and just 12% of the time on mobile websites.

This is a very important and fundamental benefit of the mobile app.

Figure 15. Source eMarketer, 2020.

Brand presence

Users usually spend quite a lot of time on their mobile devices. Another reason to choose the development of mobile applications provides a good branding opportunity as people usually use the apps they installed every day. But even if users are not actively using a mobile app, the icon of the application acts like a mini-advertisement for the brand and subconsciously influences the users.

Then we analysed the use of mobile apps globally in order to understand which kind of them are more in demand nowadays. For example, statista.com provides profound data regarding mobile

applications used around the world.

Key Mobile App Statistics

● Mobile apps are expected to generate over $935 billion in revenue by 2023.

● The Apple App Store has 1.96 million apps available for download.

● There are 2.87 million apps available for download on the Google Play Store.

● 21% of Millennials open an application 50+ times per day.

● 49% of people open an application 11+ times each day.

● 69% of all US digital media time comes from mobile apps.

● The average smartphone owner uses 10 apps per day and 30 apps each month.

Global Downloads

As mobile application usage grows in popularity, the number of application downloads worldwide increases as well.

Figure 16. Source: Statista.

Free vs. Paid Downloads

Figure 17. Source: Statista. 2020.

According to Statista, on average paid downloads make-up on average of 5% of the market whereas the rest 95% are free downloads. (Statista, 2020.)

The next statistic we analysed was the report from App Annie, the leading global provider of mobile data and analytics with more than 1 mln. users.

According to the App Annie, App Sessions Inside Food and Drink Apps Grew 105% Year Over Year in 2020, but obviously, many of these applications are about choosing the food from the restaurant and delivering it home, whereas we are offering new and different concepts. (App Annie, 2022.)

App Annie also published an analytical report for 2021 with some 2022 predictions mentioning that

“we head into the most mobile-first environment we have ever seen”. Some key takeaways from the report:

● In 2021 more time than before, is spent using mobile apps, reaching 4.8 hours per day in the top mobile-first markets.

● Consumers are migrating their attention and wallets to mobile as over $320,000 flowed

● Mobile services from both early adopters and mobile-forced players remain in high demand - with global consumers downloading over 435,000 apps per minute.

● Advertisers are taking note of the broad reach and deep engagement of mobile apps with mobile ad spending on track to hit $350 billion in 2022, after surpassing $295 in 2021. (App Annie, 2022.)

Figure 18. Source: App Annie.

The most popular apps in 2021 were related to gaming, finance, social media, food & drink and shopping.

Total spending in the two dominant app stores has been rising since they launched more than a decade ago. Despite predictions of a slowdown, the app economy keeps growing. In 2021, total spending is on target to rise by nearly 25% to hit $135 billion.

App Annie predicts tremendous growth for the app market in the coming years – with revenue from entertainment apps rising to $12 billion in 2022. That's double the total for 2020.

By the end of this year, 2022, mobile users will have downloaded nearly 140 billion new apps – that's 10 billion more than in 2020, and 20 billion more than in 2019, up 8% year over year (YoY).

Looking more closely at the numbers, we can see the direct impact of lockdowns, which mostly started in March 2020. Global weekly app sessions actually fell during the first three months of 2020.

At their lowest, on March 22, they were at 1.81 billion. But from then on they spiked upwards to reach 3.02 billion at the end of December. (App Annie. 2022.)

But obviously, the market of mobile apps is growing rapidly and according to the forecast will continue to grow in the next few years.

Figure 19. Source App Annie.

Most Popular App Store Categories

Figure 20. Source: App Annie.

If we take the share of the Finnish market based on the population. The world population in 2021 was 7,9 Bln. in Finland 5,5 Mln which is 0,07% of the world population. There were 230 Bln downloads of apps in 2021 but only 5% of paid apps and only 3,5% of apps related to food and drinks. Based on this around 288 Td users in Finland per year download the app, but as we can imagine many of them use delivery services and of course, there are also a lot of different kinds of other food apps. But if we go back to Kesko statistics and the data that 50% of the people in research are interested in developing their cooking skills we can probably consider at least 100 Td of people as a potential users of our app per year and if 10% of them will still stay and pay for promo version our assumption from the Business plan was quite right. (Worldpopulation review. 2021.)