Southeast Asia’s love affair with shopping apps and large mobile devices continue to grow – Flurry

Spike in
e-commerce swipes mobile usage & activity from social apps

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Phablet is most preferred mobile device, with 73% market
share

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Shopping apps saw biggest increase in use, at 170%

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Time spent on messaging and social apps fell marginally

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New entrants taking the bite out of Apple share

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SINGAPORE - Media
OutReach - 28 November 2018 – Flurry the mobile
developer analytics platform within Oath, has revealed key insights surrounding
mobile activity, emerging growth categories and device trends across Southeast
Asia this year.

 

Backed
by data from over 940,000 apps across 2.1 billion global devices, Flurry’s
“State of Mobile” study also assessed 14,500 apps and 217 million devices
across this region in 2018.

 

The
research found that phablets are especially popular in Southeast Asia, where
almost three-quarters (73%) of devices used are large-screen mobile phones.
Though the phablet is the fastest growing mobile phone segment globally,
adoption in this region is outpacing growth in the United States, where its
market share is just 48 per cent.

 

 

Meanwhile,
the region is quickly taking to m-commerce, which has seen the biggest segment
growth in 2018. The Flurry study identified that mobile shopping app usage has
spiked by 240 per cent in the last year, followed by health and fitness (170%)
and business and finance apps (102%). At the same time, photography app usage
has halved since 2017 and news and magazine apps have seen a fall of 32 per
cent. Messaging and social media use have declined marginally, by 2 per cent.

 

“The
level of competition between mobile apps has become brutal in Southeast Asia,
though the decelerating rate of global growth could signal market maturity,
saturation or simply the end of the app gold rush,” said Rico Chan, Managing Director, Hong Kong, Japan and INSEA of Oath.

 

He
added, “Retailers need to consider the pace of growth in m-commerce and work
with app developers to meet the needs of consumers. Users now see their phones
as more than a tool for snapping photos and catching up with the news
headlines.”

 

The
report also showed that there have been small shifts among mobile device brand
usage, with phone and tablet manufacturers like Samsung, OPPO and Xiaomi
growing marginally at the expense of Apple. This year, the iPhone and iPad
major has seen its share of the market drop from 20 per cent to 12 per cent
across Southeast Asia, whereas Samsung’s sales have grown by two percentage
points, OPPO by three and Xiaomi by four points.

 

Key insights and trends from Flurry’s
State of Mobile report:

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Southeast Asia is leading
the phablet revolution:

Regional mobile users are phablet lovers, with
large-screen devices securing 73% of the Southeast Asian handset market. This
footprint is also reflected, to a lesser degree, by global adoption figures.

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Apple losing its bite

Apple’s market share dropped by 12 percentage points,
from 20 percent of the market in 2017 to 12 per cent this year.

Samsung’s distribution grew from 28 per cent to 30 per
cent.

Share of Chinese brands OPPO and Xiaomi grew by three
and four percentage points respectively in the Southeast Asian market.

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Diversification of apps:

The top three app growth categories in Southeast Asia
are Shopping, Health and Fitness, and Business and Finance.

Shopping app use has grown substantially due to users
being more willing to pay via mobile devices as mobile payments become more
advanced and trustworthy.

On the other hand, the biggest fallers were
Photography (50%), News and Magazines (32%) and Games (28%).

As phones come with much more advanced photo editing
features, users are no longer needing to use photography apps as much as
before. Gaming app usage has also fallen because ironically, mobile gamers are
more willing to make in-app purchases to level, thus are spending less time
in-game to advance levels.

Though in fourth place, lifestyle app usage grew by 51
per cent, compared to 2017.

Music and entertainment apps grew by 20 percent, year
on year.

Books and reference apps grew 17 per cent, year on
year.

Though Southeast Asia has some of the world’s highest
social messaging engagement, growth has fallen by 2 per cent this year,
compared to 2017.

Utilities and productivity app usage have also fallen
this year, by 28 per cent.

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Top Global Trends

Social sharing of media–otherwise known as
“Communitainment”–is driving mobile consumers to spend more than two hours per
day on social and messaging apps.

The average mobile consumer spends just under five
hours each day on their smartphone.

Shopping applications saw over 17 billion sessions in
2016, effectively changing retail window shoppers into mobile impulse buyers.

Global app usage continues to grow. In previous years,
we have seen all app categories grow in tandem, yet the story is changing. In
2016 mobile apps started cannibalising their audience, with session and
time-spent growth in some app categories occurring at the expense of others.

While messaging and social apps use rose
year-over-year by 44%, personalisation apps, such as emoji keyboards, declined
by 46%.

Verizon Media Group/Oath:

 

Verizon
Media Group/Oath is a division of Verizon at the intersection of media,
advertising and technology building a member-centric ecosystem created to serve
billions. Verizon Media Group/Oath is shaping the future as a global leader in
digital and mobile. For more information, visit www.oath.com.