Mobile app downloads slow down in India — dip below five billion

• Google Play apps downloads in India fell by 6% this quarter.
  
• Overall apps downloads dipped to below five billion, a milestone that India hit last quarter.
  
• India’s Club Factory app breached the top 20 on the Google Play store for the first time — ranking first on the ‘Top Free’ apps during its Club Diwali Sale.
  

India leads the world in app downloads — partly because of its population and partly because of how internet penetration has increased.

Cheap data plans propelled the growth of downloads in the country at 58% CAGR since 2016. India went from below one billion in Q1 2016 to 5.4 billion last quarter (Q2 2019).

But this quarter, the upward trajectory reversed, according to Sensor Tower’s Q3 2019 report.

Downloads from Apple’s App Store continue to be only a miniscule percentage of India’s total downloads.

Apps downloaded from the Google Play Store, on the other hand, fell by 6% this quarter, dipping below five billion — even though downloads grew at a quarterly rate of 9.7% globally.

It’s still a 9% improvement over the same quarter last year.

The growth of downloads might be slowing down in India, but it’s still miles ahead of the US and Brazil — countries with the second and third highest app downloads, respectively.

One of the notable apps in India was Club Factory, an e-commerce platform, which made it into the national top 20 for the very first time this quarter.

According to Sensor Tower, the app’s Club Diwali Sale catapulted its fast growth and even helped it become the top ranking app among the ‘Top Free’ chart on the Google Play Store.

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