Mobile Internet & Apps

The number of mobile app downloads experienced slow growth between 2022 and 2023. In 2023, app downloads grew by only 0.8 percent, compared to the 11 percent growth recorded between 2021 and 2022. Despite slowing growth, the ownership of tablets, wearable tech, and smartphones continues to rise. With the introduction of artificial intelligence, mobile apps are bound to offer even more personalized services to users.

In recent years, the mobile operating system space has been a battlefield between two giants – iOS and Android. Despite the financial success of Apple’s iOS, Android is more popular because it is the default on cheaper mobile devices. While it may be arguable which platform is the better of the two, Android has dominated the landscape for the last eight years, laying claim to a substantial 71 percent of the global market at the beginning of 2024.

Mobile devices are not immune to online threats, such as data breaches, phishing attacks, malware, and advertising fraud. The volume of global smishing attacks targeting organizations and companies increased in recent years, with over 76 percent of organizations reporting to have been targeted by phishing attacks sent by SMS on their mobile devices.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a surge in in-app spending and mobile content consumption. Since 2023, users have been slowly returning to their offline lives, prompting a normalization in download and spending trends worldwide. In 2022, global users spent approximately 167 billion U.S. dollars on mobile apps, almost two percent less than in 2021. In 2023, app spending returned to growing again, as users generated 171 billion U.S. dollars in spending.