More and more customer choose shopping online

Personalisation, optimised experience, hassle-free checkout - mobile shopping apps are key to the omnichannel experience

Mobile shopping hit an all-time high on Black Friday 2022, accounting for nearly 50% of total sales at the top 100 internet retailers in the US. Mobile sales account for 73% of global sales for small merchants and DTC (direct to consumer) brands.

As mobile commerce paves the way, consumers will shift their share of spending from goods to consumer products and experiences as disposable income is squeezed amidst layoffs and rising costs of living. Despite the challenges retail is facing, more and more people are meeting their needs via mobile devices and apps are becoming a key part of the shopping experience. Marketers need to continually improve the customer experience of apps in order to enhance the app's competitive advantage and brand differentiation, and in turn create uniqueness and relevance in the global marketplace, thereby contributing to long-term success.




Amazon gained more active users on Black Friday than Walmart and Target combined Amazon was the biggest winner on Black Friday in the US, with 4.7 million more WAUs than in the previous two weeks. The other apps with the most active users were mostly brick-and-mortar retailers, including Walmart, Target and Kohl's.

In China, Taobao saw the largest increase in WAUs during the Nov 11 shopping extravaganza. Taobao downloads in November 2022 were four times higher than the previous month. Meanwhile, Flipkart was the top growing app in India during the Nine Nights Festival.

Consumers use shopping apps to reach nearly 110 billion hours by 2022

Hours of use increased by 9% globally, slowing from the 20% compound annual growth rate between 2019 and 2022.

The fastest growing markets for shopping app usage include the emerging markets of India and Indonesia in Asia Pacific and Brazil, Mexico and Argentina in Latin America.

Budget conscious consumers drive the growth of mobile shopping

In 2020, the epidemic drove rapid growth in mobile shopping, particularly for retailers who need to maintain sales and consumers who avoid offline shopping. Retailer apps saw a 43% year-on-year increase in downloads in 2020.



As offline shopping resumes in 2022 and hyperinflation puts pressure on consumers' financial situation, mobile apps are becoming an essential tool for budget-conscious consumers to save money. Downloads of coupon and prize apps grew by 27% year-on-year. "Buy now, pay later" apps also showed strong growth in 2022, with Europe, Asia, North America, Africa and the Middle East being the fastest growing sub-categories.

Apple Search advertising is an opportunity for physical retailers

Nearly half of the top 15 iPhone searches for shopping-related keywords in the US are for brick-and-mortar retailers. But brick-and-mortar retailers are lagging in terms of paid search ad share (SOV). Meanwhile, grocery shops such as Whole Foods Market and Kroger are clearly finding opportunities for search ad bidding by targeting large grocery retailers.

For brick-and-mortar apps, protecting their keywords is a good start. The Home Depot and Walmart have the highest SOV for their own search terms, while other popular apps such as Nike, Target and Walgreens have even less than 5% SOV for their own terms.

More info about Apple Search advertising(ASA)🚀

Personalised services are attracting consumer spending

US users contribute more than half of all health and fitness user spending

In terms of user spend, the US remains the dominant market for health and fitness apps, accounting for more than half of the spend on the App Store and Google Play. Eight of the top 10 apps in terms of user spend in 2022 will originate in the US, including the top 3 in each age group user type (MyFitnessPal, Fitbit and Calm).

The challenge for health and fitness app publishers continues to be how to cash in on traffic outside of the US. While many other countries have large user bases, only the US, UK, Germany and Canada will have an average consumer spend of more than $1 per download in 2022 among the top 20 markets in terms of downloads.



Personalised services are increasingly attracting consumer spending, with health and fitness tracking and on-demand workout and fitness programmes increasingly topping the downloads and spending charts.

The demographics of health and fitness users vary by sub-category

Stress reduction, meditation and fitness programmes, both of which tend to have fairly balanced demographics, with a fairly even distribution index between different age groups in most markets. While the overall distribution is balanced, competition between fitness apps has led certain companies to focus on specific demographic groups, for example, the female weight loss app and the male weight loss app published by ABISHKKING.




Giving older users access to medical services via mobile devices is key to the NHS. Health monitoring and telemedicine apps are mainly for the 45+ age group.

The use of meditation apps is expected to grow in 2023, with users prioritising a calming and stress-reducing experience in a stressful economic environment.

Sports betting continues to grow

Sports TV apps are gradually tapping into users' latent demand for live sports events

Sports betting in the US continues to grow, which will open up a huge and lucrative market for mobile apps. In May 2018, the US Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, following which states introduced new sports betting laws and also launched mobile apps in these new markets. The start of the NFL season and Super Bowl each year sees a record number of sports betting app downloads.

At the start of the 2022-2023 NFL season, sports betting app installs reached 4.3 million, an 8% increase year-over-year, which is more than four times the total number of installs from September to October 2018. 2022 saw FanDuel race to the top of the market as the number one sports betting app, while BetMGM, DraftKings, and William Hill vying for second place.

Sports TV apps vie for exclusive streaming content

In 2022, major sporting events drove a surge in downloads of sports TV apps, including the FIFA World Cup, which begins in November 2022. As a result, both FOX Sports in the US and TSN GO in Canada saw a significant increase in user adoption.

DAZN and ESPN are significantly better in terms of user spend, both generating more revenue in 2022 than the remaining apps in the top 10 sports apps combined. Some of DAZN's live coverage includes Italian football, Japanese professional baseball and pay-per-view boxing.

Sports betting applications are highly relevant to financial applications

As the US continues to legalise sports betting in recent years, sports fans have been overwhelmed by the variety of sports betting ads available, and the rising number of installs indicates the potential for growth in the country. Knowing your target audience can help improve the effectiveness of your ads and give you an edge over your competition.



Sports betting apps are primarily aimed at male users in the 25-44 age group. Other sports betting apps that customers are more likely to use have similar demographic user profiles. In addition, they include sub-genres that require users to be able to easily conduct financial transactions on their mobile devices, such as cryptocurrency trading, personal investments and BNPL.