India’s lockdown affecting its most popular apps

Due to the spread of covid-19, which is forcing people to stay at their homes and maintain social distancing, has led to a gush in the latest and new downloads of various consumers and enterprise apps in the west. But in India, the largest open market globally, things have taken a slightly different turn.

The lockdown which was earlier for 21 days and was supposed to end on 14^th of April has now been extended till 3^rd of May. The pandemic coronavirus is not only affecting the health of millions of people but also the economy of the nation. Various apps have seen a drastic drop in their downloads. Daily downloads for several popular apps like TikTok, WhatsApp has seen a major drop in their downloads in the last three months or has remained unchanged.  Also, various popular apps that offer in-app purchases have also faced a revenue drop in the last four weeks owing to the lockdown as most of the companies have offered their employees to work from home.

Top apps with least downloads

1.      Tiktok- Tiktok is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming. It is used to create short dance, lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. The app was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in markets outside of China. Tiktok was downloaded by 20.2 million times in India in a 31-day period ending on April 12 and has come down from 21.6 million times in January. This is a drastic downfall from a country like India. Tiktok saw most of the downloads in February with 700,000 downloads in a day. Though TikTok has been the most popular app, 4 out of 10 people in India have TikTok installed on their mobile phones.

2.      WhatsApp- WhatsApp Messenger, or simply WhatsApp, is an American freeware, cross-platform messaging and Voice over IP service owned by Facebook, Inc. It allows users to send text messages and voice messages, makes voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other media. WhatsApp’s download plunged to 12 million from 17 million during the lockdown period. WhatsApp is the most popular app with 8 out of 10 people in India having WhatsApp installed on their phones. WhatsApp’s figure has dropped from 650,000 to below 250,000.

3.      Hotstar- Disney+ Hotstar is an Indian over-the-top streaming service owned by Novi Digital Entertainment, a subsidiary of Star India. It features two paid subscription tiers—the "VIP" tier, which focuses on domestic programs and sports content (including Indian Premier League cricket), and a second "Premium" tier featuring premium international films and television series (including HBO, Showtime and other American original series). It saw a dip in its downloads from 9 million to 3.8 million in the past few weeks. Though a decline in the number of downloads Hotstar saw an improvement in its revenue from $173,253 to $329,675. Disney launched Disney + Hotstar earlier this month.

While some of the other famous app saw a drastic decline in their revenue such as Netflix, Tinder. Tinder recorded $319,102 in in-app revenue on both app store and google play store between March 13 to April 12.  While on the other hand, Netflix’s revenue declined from $285,562 to $192,154 during the same period. LinkedIn and YouTube also saw a great decline.

Top apps with most downloads

1.      BigBasket- BigBasket is India’s largest online food and grocery store. The grocery app saw a raise in its downloads to $60 million last week. While other grocery apps such as Grofers have surged considerably.

2.      Zoom- Zoom is a web-based video conferencing tool with a local, desktop client and a mobile app that allows users to meet online, with or without video. Zoom users can choose to record sessions, collaborate on projects, and share or annotate on one another's screens, all with one easy-to-use platform. It has seen increasing demand and downloads during the lockdown with its daily downloads surge over to 500,000 in recent weeks. Zoom is being used by various employees of the company to conduct meetings while staying at home. Various schools and colleges are also using the app to conduct online classes to not miss on the syllabus.

3.      Ludo King- Ludo King is a gaming app based on Ludo, the famous Indian indoor board game between friends and family. Ludo King is a cross-platform multiplayer game that supports Desktop, Android, iOS and Windows mobile platforms at the same time. This game also supports offline mode, where players can play with Computer or, Local multiplayer. Owing to the fact that everyone needs to stay home and maintain social distancing what can be more entertaining than playing a game with your mates.  Its download jumped from 150,000 to 450,000 in recent days.

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