Mobile Internet is surging in India and while I ain’t sure if 3G is fueling it or not, we know for sure that making apps for your business offering is a must for startups and biggies alike. For a couple of months I have been following Zomato as they present at Startup Saturdays across Pune and Mumbai. While they presented their awesome offering (read our Zomato app Review) one of their slides attracted me. It highlighted the no of app downloads across platform that Zomato has. Out comes the camera and I clicked it. Here it is:
To our surprise Blackberry (80,000) had the maximum app downloads, followed by Android (20,000), iOS (7,500) and Nokia. Some of the Blackberry boost comes from the fact that Zomato was featured by Blackberry on their App World. However it is clear that Android tops iOS in India. At the same time, Blackberry sure has traction in India, it is after all one of their fastest growing markets.
I noted these figures and posted an article on it, the Zomato team contacted me soon after with some more details. To begin with, the download figures have changed and below you would see the new figures. But is downloads the only measure? Not exactly and that’s whee inputs from Saurabh Sengupta of Zomato helps us understand the apps ecosystem better.
As of last week the updates figures from Zomato are:
- Blackberry App World – 1,10,000 (Playbook 2500)
- Android Market – 25,000
- iOS / App Store – 10,000
- Nokia 16,000
Now while we can make many obvious observation about the no of apps downloaded for each platform, here is some data from Zomato that gives more insights on how people are interacting with these apps. As a startup providing service using the web and apps, Zomato is keenly tracking the usage of their services across different platforms and here is what they shared with us.
Currently the descending order of app downloads is as follows:
- Blackberry
- iOS
- Android
- Nokia Ovi
While this may be the case with just Zomato, it shows that Blackberry, iOS and Android have the most traction in India currently. As per Saurabh, Blackberry gives a good reach to corporates, a market that Zomato targets. Another very interesting observation by Zomato is the engagement or usage per user. That’s a very good metric to know how much is the usage of the app on a particular platform and here is what Saurabh had for us.
The engagement levels in descending order for Zomato is:
- iOS
- Blackberry / Android (Android has a slight edge here)
- Nokia Ovi
Apple’s iOS leads the pack when it comes to user engagement and app usage, in fact Saurabh mentioned that iOS leads ‘by a margin’ on this front. Blackberry and Android are battling it hard for the no 2 spot, with Android holding an edge over Blackberry. Nokia takes the fourth spot.
Saurabh mentions that “the higher engagement of iPhone users is an indicator of their “lifestyle-consciousness” resulting in higher usage of an App that caters to the lifestyle segment. The fact that they own an iPhone is in itself an indicator of how much they value lifestyle. This segment is the one which we see growing at a rapid rate in future while maintaining their engagement levels intact.”
We believe that this also highlights how many power users own an iOS device. We recently learned that Google gets 2/3rd of its mobile traffic from iOS, that again suggests something similar. The surprising fact is the penetration of Blackberry in India. People download apps on Blackberry and use it often! Certainly RIM has more than BBM to its credit here. Not much of a surprise that Nokia plummets in usage on Symbian, perhaps Windows Phone 7 would change that.
Given the spread of different platforms and fast changing market dynamics, it seems that developers can’t rely on any single platform for traction in India. The Zomato app is free and now we wonder how paid apps fare in India?
Note: We certainly haven’t studied the trend across companies to get insights, these are figures from Zomato and if you are an app publisher focusing in India, we would love to hear from you.
