The year 2020 marked by the Covid-19 crisis did not only disappoint.
The mobile application industry - both developers and stores that take a commission on in-app purchases - has enough to rub its hands on, without hydroalcoholic gel.
The almost global containment has caused an unprecedented increase in downloads, as well as an increase in spending in applications as in mobile games, according to annual data compiled from January to November by App Annie, the market specialist.
In a mature economy, global app downloads grew 10% to 130 billion with an increase in spend on apps of 25% (to 93 billion euros).
With a preponderance of practical applications and not mobile games.
In-app purchases on the rise
More addicted to their smartphones than ever, the French have followed this fundamental movement.
To overcome boredom between four walls, consumers downloaded 5.8 billion mobile applications, including 2.2 from the App Store and 3.5 from the Play Store.
In France, iOS and Android smartphone users spent the tidy sum of 4.3 billion euros on in-app purchases.
With almost perfect equality between the iPhone (€ 2.22 billion) and the Android models (€ 2.14 billion).
Note that screens and video entertainment have been booming: the time spent on streaming apps has increased by 40% to 879 billion hours worldwide.
It is therefore logical that the applications that have emerged are linked to video and the virtual maintenance of a social or professional link.
The New King TikTok
In France, as in other countries, the Chinese application TikTok has gone into bulldozer mode with massive adoption in a few months, especially among teenagers and young adults.
In tenth place in the 2019 standings, she shouts courtesy to everyone to take the lead.
Morning essentials newsletter
A tour of the news to start the day
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
The most spectacular progress can be attributed to Zoom, the virtual conferencing app, which has become indispensable with telework and social distancing.
Freshly launched, the Disney + streaming service is also making a notable appearance in the charts.
Logically, Disney + also appears in the ranking of the most profitable applications for which French consumers have taken out their bank card or subscribed to a subscription via the application stores which charge a commission of 30%.
Like last year, the dating apps AdopteUnMec, Hapnn or Tinder and their paid options maintain their strong positions in the rankings.
The French ranking of the most used applications - measured in monthly active users - has remained little changed as it has for several years with a seniority bonus for applications in the Facebook galaxy and the emergence of TikTok in 9th position.
It remains to be seen whether these meteoric increases will continue and if these applications will succeed next year in the difficult exercise of retaining users who have discovered them in the midst of a health crisis.
