Exploring INSEA’s mobile app landscape EBOOK
Emerging app benchmarks and trends in India and Southeast Asia
Mobile marketing analytics suite Adjust has released a new report on Exploring INSEA’s mobile app landscape with Sensor Tower to analyze gaming, entertainment, fintech, and shopping app performance across India and Southeast Asia.
The mobile app market in India and Southeast Asia (INSEA) is booming as a growing number of internet users increasingly turn to their smartphones for communication, entertainment, shopping, and more. India and Indonesia are among the top five countries in the world for smartphone adoption by volume of users and by percentage of population. Meanwhile, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines each reached a 90% internet penetration rate in 2022.
Rising digital infrastructure across INSEA has led to a surge in demand for apps that cater to local needs. Over the course of the past several years, the economy and consumer demand for mobile apps have also soared, largely in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Developers have been able to capitalize on this ample opportunity and create innovative applications tailored specifically for these markets. We have begun to see the market shift in 2023, and we can expect to see continued changes moving forward. Where the mobile advertising market was broadly booming, it is now time to zero in on which verticals are signaling the highest potential for opportunities over the coming year.
Key Highlights
• Puzzle and sports games have an average 27% D1 retention rate in INSEA.
• 27% of entertainment app downloads in India are apps headquartered in the country.
• INSEA fintech app installs have grown 75% from January 2021 to December 2022.
• The average session length of a shopping app in SEA is 47.38 minutes vs. the 11.21 minutes global average.
Speaking about the report Ajit Pawar, Director Partnerships, APAC, Adjust said “Alongside the business challenges it inevitably manifested, the pandemic and a few globally impactful crises since have brought about an unprecedented acceleration of mobile app growth in the INSEA region. Unfortunately, a boosted economy will eventually begin to ease up. As a picture of the post-COVID app market has begun to take form, India and Southeast Asia have demonstrated impressive adaptability and endurance. Subsequently, 2023 promises to set the stage for new app growth and opportunities for development.”
Despite some dips and climbs, overall, 2023 promises to bring a number of opportunities for apps across India and Southeast Asia. Indeed, the mobile app market in INSEA is expected to experience significant growth over the next few years. From our delve into regional data, we found that, interestingly, home headquartered apps make up a large portion of the downloaded fintech apps in countries across the region. India demonstrated a particularly strong sense of loyalty to home headquartered apps, leading in share of volumes across all of the verticals we analyzed. Session lengths were healthy for all verticals, but particularly for shopping apps in Southeast Asia
This indicates that although INSEA stickiness and retention rates were below the global median, there is high potential for app developers to keep users engaged in the first month after install. Although lower-thanaverage rates can be expected in the gaming hyper casual subvertical, where installs trump retention, it’s clear that overall, a longer-tail approach to user acquisition within the INSEA region would be hugely beneficial to mobile marketers from a revenue perspective.
A strong interest in mobile gaming in the region is evident; the next step is attracting high-quality users. Instead of focusing solely on volume of installs, building a strategy that emphasizes user lifetime value will prove lucrative to app marketers. Attracting high LTV users can be achieved with meticulous segmentation, refined onboarding, a stellar user experience, and a robust approach to retention. Just take a look at the revenue figures for roleplay games in Singapore! The marketers able to make the rigorous datadriven decisions needed to edge out the competition and drive the numbers up will be those equipped with the right strategy and the right tools. From data centralization to measurement, analytics, and beyond, the ability to make fast, smart choices around where to pause and where to scale is essential in 2023.
