After seeing a surge in daily downloads due to the lockdown imposed by the government in the wake of Coronavirus outbreak, popular apps like TikTok, WhatsApp, Truecaller, Helo, Vmate, Facebook, Google Pay, and Paytm have seen a drop during the period of March 12-April 12 in India, a media report has said. Not only the daily downloads, the revenue generated by in-app purchases also took a hit in the last four weeks.
According to a TechCrunch analysis of figures provided by research firm Apptopia, TikTok was downloaded 20.2 million times in India in the last four weeks, down from 21.6 million times it was downloaded in the month of January. During the same period, WhatsApp’s download dropped to 12 million from 17 million; Hotstar was downloaded 3 million times as compared to 9.8 million times, and ByteDance’s Helo dropped from 10.5 million to 7.5 million.
Apptopia says that TikTok saw more than 700,000 downloads a day in India in February, peaking at 891,000 but the number decreased to below 450,000 in the last one week. WhatsApp’s download dropped from about 650,000 to below 250,000. We would like to clear that these apps have seen a surge in usage during the lockdown period, as reported by several market research firms. Additionally, there are some reports which claim that the downloads increased in the first week of lockdown in India.
Currently, Aarogya Setu app is topping the list in India with more than 780,000 downloads a day. The app was launched by the government to help people determine whether they have come in contact with a COVID-19-infected patient. It also allows the users to undertake a self-assessment test to know if they are at risk.
When it comes to the revenue clocked by these apps, Tinder generated a cumulative $319,102 in in-app revenue -- , down from $547,103 in January -- on both the App Store and Google Play Store in India between March 13 to April 12. Netflix’s in-app revenue fell from $285,562 to $192,154. But Hotstar was able to see an increase in revenue. Thanks to the launch of Disney+ on Hotstar, the in-app revenue improved from $173,253 to $329,675.
The latest report also coincides with the increase in downloads of apps like Zoom and Ludo King. Zoom downloads surged from 9,000 in early February to over 500,000 in recent weeks. Ludo King’s daily download figure registered an increase -- from about 150,000 in early February to over 450,000 during the lockdown period.
