Mobile phones are becoming increasingly important to our daily lives, and that even applies during lockdown. New research reveals that during country-wide lockdowns, people are using mobile phones more than ever.
As Coronavirus spreads across the globe, it looks as though mobile phone users are glued to their devices – turning to their mobiles for information. After city lockdowns began across China in February, mobile phone use increased to an average of 5 hours a day – that’s up 30% compared to the same month in 2019.
New research from mobile data and analytics platform App Annie shows some interesting trends when it comes to app downloads.
Business Apps lead the way
After work from home measures were introduced, Chinese smartphone users began downloading business and productivity apps. Zoom Cloud Meetings was one of the most popular, with the first week of February being the biggest ever in China in terms of Apple store downloads.
It;s a similar story in Italy, too – during a single week in February, Italians downloaded 761,000 business-related apps. That’s a massive 85% increase compared to the week before.
Financial Apps on the rise
Heading into March, the research shows a sudden interest in financial apps. This is thought to be due to growing concern for global financial markets.
Japan saw the largest increase at a whopping 55% with South Korea increasing by 35%. The US and China both saw increases of around 20% as its citizens begin to process the affect Coronavirus is having on their finances.
Mobile Game downloads increase
Interestingly, mobile game downloads saw a massive increase as more and more people were confined to their homes. Across China, games downloads saw a staggering jump of over 80% in February. That’s 80% more than the monthly average for 2019.
The most popular games? Slap Kings, Scrabble GO, Draw Climber and Brain Test: Tricky Puzzles.
But social media app Tik Tok was the big winner – a surge of 130% in the first week of March saw China spend a colossal 3 billion hours in the app.
