The marketplace in India is starting to experience the same level of “app fatigue” being seen elsewhere.
A recent study conducted by Forrester Research in India has shown that consumers will be spending a growing amount of time on their devices, but will be using fewer apps, with a preference for mobile gaming over other types of applications.
The app fatigue that is being seen in other regions of the world is clearly setting in within this country.
This trend has been especially notable in developed markets such as the United States, and Forrester Research stated that it will not take over as quickly in India for a while. The report was entitled “Predictions 2015: Most Brands Will Under-invest In Mobile”. It showed that while device users in India may be showing signs of app fatigue, their love of mobile gaming remained strong.
The report showed that mobile gaming will be, to some extent be immune to the upcoming wave of app fatigue.
The report indicated that smartphone apps are going to start to become less popular among Indian mobile device users, but at the same time, mobile games will start to increase in popularity, to a certain degree. In the United States and the United Kingdom, the average smartphone owner will use an average of 24 apps every month, but 80 percent of their time will be spent on only five of those, as a result of app fatigue.
According to iVoice Ventures’s Venky Vaiyapuri, though many smartphone users are downloading applications, many of those apps will go unused. There are also many applications that remain entertaining only when they are new and that become boring over time. Vaiyapuri explained that there are simply too many apps and this is not appealing to consumers.
He used Angry Birds as an example. While many people download that mobile gaming application, not many will use it or will continue to use it over time. He stated that “We will soon follow the US and UK markets and lose interest in downloading apps.” A Vodafone India spokesperson added that India hasn’t yet reached the level and energy of monetization seen in developed markets.
That represents a dramatic drop from the average age in 2013, which was seven years older. Among the primary reasons for this is that it is rapidly becoming more commonplace for adolescents, and even children, to own their own smartphones. This is the case because the cost of lower end devices is falling, making it more affordable for families to be able to equip their youngest members with mobile devices.