Americans now spend more time using apps than watching live TV

App Annie’s annual State of Mobile report reveals that Americans now spend more time using apps than watching live TV.

The report also shows that consumer spending on apps grew by 20% last year, in large part driven by the pandemic boosting demand for home-based entertainment …

TechCrunch reports.

Mobile adoption continued to grow in 2020, in part due to the market forces of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to App Annie’s annual “State of Mobile” industry report, mobile app downloads grew by 7% year-over-year to a record 218 billion in 2020. Meanwhile, consumer spending grew by 20% to also hit a new milestone of $143 billion, led by markets that included China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom […]

In another shift, app usage in the U.S. surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours on their mobile device.

The increase in app usage was seen across all age ranges, but was seen most dramatically across older demographics.

Gen Z [aged 8-23], millennials [24-39] and Gen X/Baby Boomers [56-74] spent 16%, 18% and 30% more time in their most-used apps year-over-year, respectively.

App Annie estimates that the pandemic generated 3-4 years’ worth of mobile growth in just one year. The fastest growth reported was TikTok.

The app saw incredible 325% year-over-year growth, despite a ban in India, and ranked in the top five apps by time spent. The average monthly time spent per user also grew faster than nearly every other app analyzed, including 65% in the U.S. and 80% in the U.K., surpassing Facebook. TikTok is now on track to hit 1.2 billion active users in 2021, App Annie forecasts.

Where consumers go, investors follow.

Investors were also eager to fuel mobile businesses as a result, pouring $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year. According to Crunchbase data, 26% of total global funding dollars in 2020 went to businesses that included a mobile solution.

From 2016 to 2020, global funding to mobile technology companies more than doubled compared with the previous five years, and was led by financial services, transportation, commerce and shopping.

You can find many more stats in the full coverage.

Photo: Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels