A recent report from data.ai, Mobile App Market Forecast 2030, expects mobile applications to demonstrate a $2.2 trillion revenue from 2021 to 2030.

We at Lovemobile decided to investigate this report and share the valuable insights with our community.

Growing profits, installs, and hours

The report provides info on the significant growth of user spending on app stores, which is going to see a 267% increase during the decade. In 2030 alone, consumer spending is projected to total $288 billion.

At the same time, the number of app installations is expected to grow substantially: between 2021 and 2030, users will download about 2.9 trillion apps and games. This number will be 123% greater than in the previous decade.

In its report, data.ai also forecasts the growing amount of time users will spend with their gadgets. During the decade, this indicator will surpass the figure of 58 trillion hours, making around 16 billion hours per day.

Mobile games are top profit generators

It happens to be that the gaming sector leads the app market in terms of making money from users. This fact has to do with players who are willing to spend their resources (time and money) on games. Developers employ various retention strategies, including in-app events, customizable avatars, scoreboards, and many others. These stimulating events just “make” a user deposit their money into the game, thus contributing hugely to the development of this mobile apps vertical.

Non-gaming apps may overtake games in consumer spending

It’s important to note, however, that due to rising installs, non-gaming applications may outpace games in terms of user spending. As data.ai predicts, annual spending on apps will hold a market share of more than 50% by 2030, nearly 1.5 times greater than in 2023 (37%).

Video content apps gain the lead

The growing demand for short-video applications turns out to be a global trend. The report predicts that by 2030, consumer spending on entertainment category apps globally will account for 18% of annual user spending, representing a 120% growth rate over 7 years (from 2023 to 2030).

Despite the dominance of entertainment apps, major players like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram continue to be the most engaging. According to data.ai, time spent on social and entertainment apps will be more than 4.8 trillion hours in 2030, surpassing that figure for all of 2022.

The rapid growth of third-world markets

While developed markets (US, China, Japan, and Korea) are expected to prevail in terms of increasing revenue from users, other regions are expected to see explosive growth in this metric, data.ai reveals. In Central America, South America, and Africa, huge average annual growth rates of 12%, 10.9%, and 10.8% respectively are projected for the next decade.

Data presented in the report shows that the mobile market continues to expand and will reach unprecedented heights by 2030 in terms of installs, time spent in the app, and user spending.

We will keep an eye on how the mobile apps and the market itself will evolve.