Mobile App Trends that are About to Dominate the Market in 2016: The Rise of Augmented Reality, Virt

According to another Forrester statistic, there is a huge gap between leading companies that regard mobile devices as a catalyst to transforming their business and companies that consider mobile devices to be just another development channel. As of early 2016, only 18% of companies surveyed were in the first category. This number is expected to pass 25% by next year.

Mobile App Trends that are About to Dominate the Market in 2016

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Monetization through in-app purchases is especially common in mobile games, as well as various product catalog apps, which charge a service fee for every item sold. This model is so flexible that some games go too far in encouraging users to make purchases. As of February 2016, about 1.9% of mobile gamers made in-app purchases, as reported by Tech Times, and this number is rising steadily.

Time will tell how the mobile app market will develop. Market trends show that the market will continue to generate higher and higher revenue in the foreseeable future. So, it is quite clear that the much-discussed mobile app revolution is just beginning.

Doubtless, content marketing will form a major part of your digital marketing strategy in 2017, but which content marketing trends should you jump on? Can you stick to the tried and true strategies from 2016 or should you get in early on an emerging trend?

A survey of 182 marketers by Content Marketing Institute found that 75% said that they were using more interactive content in 2016 vs. 2015 for two major reasons: to educate their audience and increase engagement.

"Mobile to overtake fixed Internet access by 2014" was the huge headline summarizing this bold 2008 mobile marketing prediction by Mary Meeker, an analyst at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers reviewing technology trends. That same year, Eric Schmidt of Google exhorted businesses to take a 'Mobile First' approach to designing web experiences, informed by customer-focused smartphone analytics. Our mobile marketing statistics compilation contains all the marketing research you need to make the right decision in 2021.

The mobile statistics that the team at Smart Insights curate in the regular updates to this article are grouped under these headings for key questions marketers need to answer about mobile to help them compete:

Eric Schmidt, then Chairman of Google, talked about a Mobile-First approach. The reality is that while smartphone use is overwhelmingly popular for some activities such as social media, messaging, and catching up with news and gossip, the majority of consumers in western markets also have desktop (and tablet) devices which they tend to use for more detailed review and purchasing.

We have seen at the start of this article that mobile dominates digital minutes, but where are these mobile minutes happening? Ericson Mobility Report 2020 found video currently accounts for 63% of mobile traffic. The main driver for this behaviour is the rapid diffusion of a wide range of video content such as embedded video in web browsing, social media, plus increased video streaming and sharing services.

However, interestingly, it seems the value of mobile marketing comes into play later in the decision-making process. A recent retail report by eMarketer states that internet users looking for more information in-store often skip approaching retail associates and go directly to their smartphones:

The gap between mobile app usage and mobile browser usage is also widening. In 2020, eMarketer predicts that adult smartphone users will spend about 4 hours per day using mobile internet, and 88% of that time will be spent in mobile apps, rather than a browser. This speaks to the importance of companies not only optimizing their websites for mobile, but creating custom, responsive apps too.

Free apps dominate the market. 96% of Google Play apps are free and, as seen below, 92% of apps in the Apple Store are available at no cost. Among app pricing strategies, the free and freemium models appear to be the ones that have consistently worked the best across app categories, given their increasing popularity. Many of these apps still making money thanks to ads, add-ons and upgrades.

These figures, which cover the second quarter of 2016, show that Android has actually increased its market share by 4 percent over the last year. All other operating systems are down, with iOS losing 1.7 percent [..]

Gartner's own press release said, "Apple continued its downward trend with a decline of 7.7 percent in the second quarter of 2016",[31] which is their decline, based on absolute number of units, that underestimates the relative decline (with the market increasing), along with the misleading "1.7 percent [point]" decline. That point decline means an 11.6% relative decline (from 14.6% down to 12.9%).

Windows is still the dominant desktop OS, but the dominance varies by region and it has gradually lost market share to other desktop operating systems (not just to mobile) with the slide very noticeable in the US, where macOS usage has more than quadrupled from Jan. 2009 to Dec. 2020 to 30.62% (i.e. in Christmas month; and 34.72% in April 2020 in the middle of COVID-19, and iOS was more popular overall that year;[93] globally Windows lost to Android that year,[94] as for the two years prior), with Windows down to 61.136% and ChromeOS at 5.46%, plus traditional Linux at 1.73%.[95]

As of March 2015[update], Android has made steady gains to becoming the most popular tablet operating system:[150] that is the trend in many countries, having already gained the majority in large countries (India at 63.25%,[151] and in Indonesia at 62.22%[152]) and in the African continent with Android at 62.22% (first to gain Android majority in late 2014),[153] with steady gains from 20.98% in August 2012[154] (Egypt at 62.37%,[155] Zimbabwe at 62.04%[155]), and South America at 51.09% in July 2015.[156] (Peru at 52.96%[157]). Asia is at 46%.[158] In Nepal, Android gained majority lead in November 2014 but lost it down to 41.35% with iOS at 56.51%.[159] In Taiwan, as of October 2016, Android after having gained a confident majority, has been on a losing streak.[160] China is a major exception to Android gaining market share in Asia (there Android phablets are much more popular than Android tablets, while similar devices get classified as smartphones) where the iPad/iOS is at 82.84% in March 2015.[161]

Formerly, according to a StatCounter press release, the world has turned desktop-minority;[182] as of October 2016[update], at about 49% desktop use for that month, but mobile wasn't ranked higher, tablet share had to be added to it to exceed desktop share.

Previously, according to a StatCounter press release, the world has turned desktop-minority;[205] as of October 2016[update], at about 49% desktop use for that month,[206][207] with desktop-minority stretching up to an 18-weeks/4-months period from 28 June to 31 October 2016,[208][209] while whole of July, August or September 2016, showed desktop-majority (and many other long sub-periods in the long stretch showed desktop-minority; similarly only Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are desktop-minority). The biggest continents, Asia and Africa, have shown vast mobile-majority for long time (any day of the week), as well as several individual countries elsewhere have also turned mobile-majority: Poland, Albania (and Turkey)[210] in Europe and Paraguay and Bolivia[211] in South America.[212]

Speaking of voice-activated products, Synchrony pointed to them as the third-most important retail trend that brands should have on their radars in 2016. Whether it's stretching the limits of the Amazon Alexa ecosystem or working to build out proprietary voice-enabled search functions, Synchrony believes the oral tech wave is soon to break on retail's shores. There's even rumblings about a resurgence of voice-activated AI assistants that capitalize on ground broken by products like Apple's Siri - Viv, a hybrid chatbot-AI built by Siri's co-founders, thinks it can do for smartphone-based concierge what the Alexa did for electronic assistants in the home, including completing complex online orders with users' voices and without opening any apps.

What might give most retailers fits in 2016, though, is the continued advance of virtual reality into the online and in-store shopping process. Hailed by supporters as a potential bridge between the physical and digital retail worlds, VR has been something of a mixed-bag for merchants so far with awkward, bare-bones implementations and gimmicky rollouts galore. Even VR device manufacturers like Oculus are struggling with the tech's first moments in the harsh daylight of market exposure; the Facebook-backed company is apparently so eager to get its Rift headset into consumers hands that it's passing over thousands of names on pre-order lists to get the devices into B&M storefronts as demo models for the general public.

While mobile devices are more popular worldwide, Americans still slightly prefer their computers. Overall, spend an average of 3 hours 34 minutes on desktop and 3 hours and 30 minutes on mobile devices. Mobile App Industry Statistics by Trends and ProjectionsMobile app usage has been trending upwards for many years, and all signs point to continued growth. With that in mind, here are some facts about mobile app industry trends and projections: 2ff7e9595c