When we take a look at the mobile application market, which is increasing exponentially every year around the world, we can say that this rise is not a big surprise for over 3.2 billion smartphone users. In fact, it is an indication that this rising unity of application users and smartphone users will continue to rise with ever-increasing momentum in the near future.
Bahsettiğim bu birlikteliğe bir de 1.14 milyarın üzerindeki tablet kullanıcısını eklediğimizde yapılan araştırmalarda ortaya çıkan büyümenin son 6 yılda %36’sının üzerinde olduğu görülmekte.
Size şimdi Amerika’da yapılan bir araştırmadan bahsetmek isterim: Ortalama her Amerikalının 12 dakikada bir telefona baktığını hatta %10’luk bir kesimin 4 dakikada bir telefonunu kontrol ettiğini biliyor muydunuz?
People around the world never leave our phones with them while eating, working, at home, at school, even when going to bed. Maybe you are even reading what I wrote right now on a smart phone.
So, what makes us keep our mobile phones with us so much? Have you ever thought?
Güzel o zaman cevabı biliyorsunuz, tabii ki de bize pek çok alanda kolaylık sağlayan ve olmaz olmazımız uygulamalar! Telefonlarımızla geçirdiğimiz zamanın %88’ini uygulamalar içerisinde geçiriyoruz.
If you want, you too can take your place in this multi-billion dollar industry! How can we be successful? The best way to be successful is to analyze very well why users, who are the heart of this industry, download and use these applications.
In this research, I will analyze this market and talk about the statistical data that you should definitely consider when developing an application. If you're ready, I'm starting!
First, let's start with the statistical data that plays a key role in analyzing this market;
Mobile applications are expected to generate over $935 billion in revenue by 2023.
There are 1.96 million applications available for download in the Apple App Store.
There are 2.87 million applications available for download on the Google Play Store.
Y kuşağının %21’i bir uygulamayı günde 50’den fazla kez açıyor.
İnsanların %49’u her gün 11’den fazla uygulama açıyor.
ABD’deki tüm dijital medya zamanının %69’u mobil uygulamalardan geliyor.
On average, a smartphone owner uses 19 apps per day and 30 apps every month.
Considering these statistics, we can understand that the application we will create should be an application that users will prefer and need to download. Now look, this graph I will share with you shows the growing momentum of downloaded applications over the years.
Number of Applications Downloaded by Years More than 204 billion applications were downloaded in 2019 and this number increases by %6 every year.
Gördüğünüz gibi 2016 yılı ile 2019 yılı arasında %45’lik bir sıçrama olmuş. Yıldan yıla büyüme oranı bu kadar keskin olmasa da her yıl istikrarlı bir büyümenin gerçekleştiğini söyleyebiliriz.
This growth has, of course, been directly proportional to the advancement of technology and the fact that internet access and information sharing have reached the highest level with this progress. Even if we have no knowledge, it is no longer a dream to be involved in the huge mobile application and game industry by using the blessings that the internet offers us!
I would like to explain what I mean with an example that many of us know from 2013. If I were to tell you about a game developed by Nguyễn Hà Đông, which took a few days of effort, in which a bird tries to fly through green pipes of different lengths without hitting it, its name will immediately come to your mind. Yes, I am definitely talking about Flappy Bird, which we all downloaded wondering what this game is or played on a friend's phone out of curiosity. This game, which was criticized by critics for many issues such as graphics and game mechanics, and was accepted as addictive by some, became the most downloaded “Free” game on the Apple App Store as of the end of January 2014. Did you know that even though Flappy Bird is a free game, it earns 50,000$ per day from in-app ads and sales? Based on this example, one of the first things we need to understand when creating a mobile application or game should be our monetization strategy.
When developing an application, would it be a better choice to create a monetization strategy that allows the user to download it for free but with in-app/in-game purchases, rather than designing an application that can be downloaded for a fee, or would it be a correct choice to first charge the user to download the application and then provide all the facilities to the user? Before you decide, let's take a look at which way people chose to download the app from 2011 to 2017.
Numerical values of free and paid downloads from mobile application stores worldwide from 2011 to 2017
Bu grafikte ise insanların %98’lik bir kesiminin ücretsiz uygulamaları tercih ettiğini sadece çok küçük bir kesimin paralı uygulamalara yöneldiğini görebiliyoruz.
Please don't draw the wrong conclusion from these statistics, I'm not saying you should steer clear of the idea of a paid app altogether. In fact, users do not avoid paying to download applications; only the majority of applications available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store are offered for free.
2020 Eylül ayı istatistiklerine göre Google Play Store’da bulunan uyguların %96,5’nin, Apple App Store’da bulunan uygulamalarınsa %92,3’ünün ücretsiz olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Bu istatistiklerde uygulamalar ücretsiz indirilmeye açılmış olsa da uygulama geliştiricileri uygulama içi satın alım hizmetleri sunarak ciddi bir para kazanma stratejisi ortaya koymuşlardır.
Now let's take a look at the numerical differences in the competition between the two major platforms we mentioned.
Download rates from App Store and Google Play Store between July 1, 2020 and September 30, 2020
Bu grafikte 2019’dan 2020’ye indirilme yüzdelerindeki artışı görüyorsunuz. Google Play Store’un indirilme oranı %31 artarken Apple App Store yalnızca %2,5 gibi bir büyüme kat edebilmiş. Kısacası, Google Play Store’un daha fazla indirilme oranlarına sahip olduğunu ve her yıl yüksek bir oranda büyüme kat ettiğini söyleyebiliriz.
How important is it to enter among popular applications?
By going into the details of these downloads from these two platforms, we will see what kind of applications users actually need to download, and we will clearly understand in which area and on which platform we should develop the application we want to develop.
Hemen Apple App Store’da en çok tercih edilen uygulama kategorisine bir göz atalım; 2020 Ağustos ayı verilerine göre oyun kategorisinin %21,86 ile en popüler kategori olduğunu söyleyebiliriz. Oyun kategorisini %10,11 ile iş, %8,68 ile eğitim kategorileri takip etmekte. Bu verilere dayanarak oyun kategorisinde ki uygulamaların App Store’u domine ettiğini söyleyebiliriz.
The application we want to develop may not belong to one of the top categories, but this should never make you step back because you can dominate a larger market share by turning to less saturated smaller categories! You will understand the reason for this better when you take a look at the graph I will share with you now.
Number of applications in markets increasing over the years
Oyun kategorisi en çok talep gören kategori olsa da her yıl artışını sürdüren mevcut kategorilerin bütününe baktığımızda oyun kategorisinin aslında %20’lik bir payı olduğunu göreceksiniz. Şimdiye kadar analiz ettiğimiz tüm istatistiklere göre de mantıklı olan da bu oluyor. Şimdi şuna bir göz atalım acaba gerçekten indirilme oranı ile doğru orantılı bir uygulama artışı mı bu? Yoksa indirilme oranlarının çok üzerinde piyasaya uygulama mı geliştiriliyor? Bunu anlamak için diğer büyük platform olan Google Play Store verilerine de bakarak devam edelim.
Number of active applications on Google Play Store by years
As you can see, a completely different graph emerges from the Apple Store data. What do you think could be the reason for this variable curve? The answer to this situation is that we all know that the Google Play Store is quite competitive compared to the App Store and most applications cannot survive in this competitive environment. Although there has been a sharp decline in the number of active applications in the Play Store from 2017 to 2018, the number of applications is increasing on this platform day by day.
Now let's put these two major platforms side by side. The availability of applications in the Apple App Store is increasing every year, but it remains at a lower percentage of downloads compared to the Google Play Store. In fact, when we look at this data, it shows us that the general increase in the number of applications available in both stores does not depend on the download rate.
Does the fact that my application is being downloaded indicate that it is being used?
Dünya genelinde yıllık ortalama indirilen uygulama sayısının 175 binin üzerinde olduğunu, yine ortalama %90’nını kapsayan akıllı telefon kullanıcılarının günlük 3 saat 10 dakika telefonunu kullandığını ve bu sürenin 2 saat 51 dakikasını uygulamalarda geçirdiğini biliyor muydunuz? Hatırlarsanız en başta bahsettiğimiz aslında bu yazının temelini oluşturan ve bir uygulamanın başarısını belirleyen 2 temel kuraldan bahsetmiştik. Birincisi elbette uygulamanın indirilmesi ikincisi ise kullanılıyor olması.
Research shows that an average of more than 80 applications are installed on a smartphone, but people use an average of 9 applications a day and 30 applications a month. If we make a small calculation based on the results of this research, we can reach the following conclusion;
Kullanıcıların telefonunda 80 tane uygulama var ve bunun aylık olarak sadece 30’u kullanılıyor; yani uygulamaların %62’den fazlası aylık olarak kullanılmıyor! Bu ne anlama geliyor diye sorduğunuzu duyabiliyorum, genele baktığımızda ortaya çıkan durumda, para verilerek indirilen uygulamalarda dahil olmak üzere kullanıcıların akıllı telefonlarına indirdiği uygulamaların %25’nin indirildikten sonra yalnızca 1 defa kullanıldığını ve bir daha hiç kullanılmadığını söyleyebiliriz.
If you want, let's take a look at the download figures of Google Play Store and Apple App Store, which provide us with content, in the global market.
Number of downloads from application markets in the global market
In this chart you can see how large the global market share of Google Play Store is. Therefore, it would not be difficult to say that most of the application downloads around the world come from the Google Play Store.
User Expenditures on Mobile Applications
When we look at the world in general, what do you think is the amount of money spent by users on these two platforms?
Get ready, from the 3rd Quarter of 2020; I will share with you data on spending on application downloads, subscriptions and in-game purchases:
Google Play Store gross app revenue: $10.3 billion
Apple App Store gross app revenue: $19 billion
Bunun yanında Play Store 2019 yılının 3. çeyreğine göre bu gelirlerini %33,8 artırırken App Store kullanıcıları Android kullanıcılarının neredeyse 2 katı oranında uygulama harcaması yaparak bu alanı domine etmiştir.
We can deduce the following from this statistics; If your application appeals to all users, you will have the chance to earn more income from users when you launch it as an iOS application.
Which age group should I base the application I will develop?
Of course, determining the audience that the application you will develop will appeal to will be one of the factors affecting the success of this application. In the graph I will share with you now, you will be able to see the monthly average time spent on mobile applications by age groups.
Percentage of average monthly hours spent in applications by age
We can all guess that younger generations spend more time on mobile applications than older ones. However, this does not mean that we will not target other age groups. As you can see from the graph, users between the ages of 45 and 54 spend approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes of their day on mobile applications. Only 27 minutes less than those aged 25–34!
As you can see, mobile applications have been a part of our daily lives from 7 to 70, and we are moving towards a period in which we will be more intertwined with each passing day. Undoubtedly, 2021 will be a big year for the mobile application industry. You have seen that all the statistical data I have mentioned in this article so far always have a rising graph; This is an encouraging picture for anyone who has a mobile application or plans to create one. However, you cannot make a difference by simply developing an application without doing general market research and being aware of trends. So, use this guide as a reference to help you understand the mobile app industry in terms of downloads and usage. If you are ready to develop an app in 2021 or have an idea, don't waste any time and call us!
English 
Türkçe