The 2025 State of Mobile report by Sensor Tower provides significant insights into India’s position in the global mobile app market, highlighting its dominance in downloads and app usage. Here are the key takeaways:
1. Leading Global Downloads
– India emerged as the global leader in mobile app downloads, achieving over 25 billion downloads in both 2023 and 2024. This reinforces India’s status as a powerhouse in mobile app consumption, showcasing its vast user base and engagement with mobile technology.
2. Increased Time Spent on Apps
– In 2024, Indian users spent approximately 1.12 trillion hours on apps, a significant increase from 991 billion hours in 2023. This indicates a growing engagement with mobile applications, despite a slight decline in download numbers from previous years.
3. Dominance in Social Media and Entertainment
– Social media and media & entertainment (M&E) categories remained the most popular among Indian users. Apps like Instagram and JioCinema were key players, although there was a noted decline in downloads for these categories—social media apps saw a 10% drop to 1.19 billion downloads.
4. Global Trends in Spending
– While India leads in downloads, it does not rank among the top countries for in-app purchase (IAP) revenue, which was dominated by the U.S. ($52 billion) and China ($25 billion). However, global IAP revenue reached $150 billion, marking a 13% year-on-year increase, indicating robust monetization opportunities that could be tapped into by Indian developers.
5. Emerging Market Growth
– The report highlights that while India leads in downloads and engagement, other emerging markets like Mexico and Thailand also showed impressive growth in mobile spending, suggesting a broader trend of increasing mobile app adoption across developing regions.
Conclusion
India’s performance in the 2025 State of Mobile report underscores its critical role in the global mobile ecosystem, characterized by high download volumes and substantial time spent on applications. This positions India as a key market for future app development and monetization strategies, despite challenges in converting downloads into revenue compared to more mature markets.
