Data Darbar, a data and market intelligence company, and Emirati premium streaming platform Begin have announced the release of their annual State of Apps report, which includes some interesting statistics concerning Pakistan.
According to the survey, Pakistan is now one of the top ten countries in terms of Android phone usage. Overall, the research gives a thorough assessment of the country’s mobile app environment, highlighting significant trends and insights that are influencing the sector.
Data.ai reports that 3.51 billion mobile app downloads occurred in Pakistan in 2023, nearly unchanged from 3.52 billion downloads in the previous year. But from $82 million to $87 million+, the nation’s consumer expenditure increased. The mobile app market had a little realignment on a global scale, with new install growth slowing to 257 billion from 28%, and consumer spending rising to $171 billion from 2.4%.
“In 2023, Pakistani new app downloads somewhat declined after two years of being the fastest growing major market. But this was consistent with the global slowdown, during which many peer nations, including Egypt, Indonesia, and Vietnam, saw a similar pattern, in addition to the comparatively greater base at play, according to Natasha Uderani, co-founder of Data Darbar.
Read more: ZTE Launches Cutting-Edge Mobile Phone Assembly Plant in Pakistan
Beginning with the Emirati premium streaming platform Begin, Data Darbar, a platform for data and market intelligence, announced the release of its annual State of Apps report, which included some fascinating statistics concerning Pakistan.
Pakistan currently ranks in the top ten nations in the world for Android phone usage, according to the survey. With a focus on important trends and insights that are influencing the business, the research offers a thorough analysis of the mobile app market in the nation.
However, Pakistanis are using more mobile data than ever before due to a steady drop in the price of broadband. This inexorably implies that apps will be central to the nation’s digitization tsunami, and that download growth will pick back up steam in the upcoming years.
The most downloaded apps list was dominated by Meta and ByteDance. Tiktok was the clear winner with about 32 million installs in 2023, followed by WhatsApp Business. This followed the global pattern in which the two major IT companies continued to hold the top publishing positions. Three of the five most downloaded games in Pakistan were Ludo apps, demonstrating how offline gaming habits translated to the digital sphere.
With download counts of 172 million and 144 million, respectively, entertainment and finance were the two sectors in which publishers excelled. While Telenor’s Easypaisa led in the latter, the former featured Jazz-owned Tamasha at the top.
“The growth of finance and streaming applications in Pakistan highlights the fundamental transition to mobile for the provision of banking and entertainment services,” stated Jonathan Mark, CCO of Begin, a premium streaming service based in the United Arab Emirates that is making its debut in South Asia and the GCC. We anticipate additional development and innovation in these and other app categories as customers’ demand for digital services rises and they become more tech-savvy.
About 5,000 apps would be published by Pakistani-domiciled publishers in 2023, trailing just Vietnam, the dominant country in the area. The information technology sector is expected to experience significant growth in the upcoming years due to a persistent increase in the admission of new firms. This will present a significant potential, especially in gaming and application categories that are geared towards exports.