Smartphone app spending has indeed made a mark in H1 2019 and will definitely impact the consumers well. It has carved nicely for itself in the app world.
Smartphone apps are an indeed useful product in several ways and even in the new method of collecting data on smallholder farming systems in the digital age. Using smartphone apps and sensors may indeed help researchers to collect more accurate data. This also applies to Smartphone app spending in H1.
Nearly $40 billion was spent on smartphone apps in the first half of 2019. The figure takes into consideration both Apple’s App Store and Google Play downloads. The figure was 15% more than the same period last year implying new record in H2 and 2019 as a whole.
iOS users do alone spend $25.5 billion in the App Store for the period, which is a 13% increase compared to H1 2018. On the other side, their Android counterparts shelled out $14.2 billion across Google Play which is near 20% more than last year. One may wonder about Smartphone app spending in H1.
The highest-earning apps were no doubt in the gaming category which fetched $29.6 billion. Tencent’s Arena of Valor (also referred to as Honor of Kings) brought in $728 million across iOS and Android. Second place was for Fate/Grand Order with its $628 million revenues which are followed by Monster Strike which totaled $566 million. One can think of Smartphone app spending in H1.
In the non-gaming world, Tinder did amass the largest fortune with $497 million followed by Netflix with its $399 million and Tencent Video which brought in $278 million.
In terms of total app downloads, H1 2019 observed an increase of 11% despite a slowdown in iOS installs. 56.7 billion Apps were downloaded for the given period with Android accounting for nearly 42 billion of those while iOS installs were only 14.2 billion. What about Smartphone app spending in H1?
Apple’s platform still does generate almost 2 times more revenue despite having 1/3 of the installs.
The most downloaded apps across both platforms continued to be lead by WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook. TikTok and Instagram complete the top five.
All over the developing world, the spread of mobile- and smartphones has led to much demand for mobile services for rural populations. While the potentiality of mobile services to provide development opportunities for smallholder farmers are widely acknowledged, the potentials to make use of smartphone applications in order to collect data on smallholder farming systems are little explored. Yet, researchers studying farming systems do require good quality data. So far, data on smallholder farming systems is rather typically collected making use of household surveys.
Survey questions are rather prone to recall biases which can be substantial. This paper does assess whether a smartphone can be made use of to collect data in real time and thus increase the accuracy of socioeconomic as well as agronomic data collection. The focus is on a smartphone application that was developed for this purpose. One makes use of this application to analyze the effects of agricultural mechanization on intra-household time-use as well as nutrition in rural Zambia.
The early, descriptive results do shed interesting light on the effects of mechanization, the contribution of is primarily methodological. The study does highlight the potentials of making use of smartphone applications in order to collect socio-economic and agronomic data on smallholder-farming systems, potentially in real time. It also does suggest ways to combine data recorded by respondents with built-in sensors of smartphones and external sensors. This brings forth fascinating new pathways for researchers in the digital age.
