The first part of the report covers the extended data about the mobile app industry in the face of the pandemic: the way it affects consumer spending and ad spend on mobile applications, the reasons why people prefer mobile devices to websites.
The second half of the report identifies software testing: mobile app testing, move from in-house testing to crowdsourced testing (crowdtesting), its global market value, growth and market share, and increasing traffic of the leading crowdtesting platforms.
The data used in the research paper was collected, analyzed, and forecasted by the analytics and research team of Buglance.
User spending in mobile app
Although COVID-19 has reduced the revenues in many industries, mobile software is among the lucky ones that keep growing.
With the reduced social interaction and increased need for communication, consumer spending on mobile apps has been rising. With the annual growth of $17- $18 billion over half-decade, global user spending on mobile apps is forecasted to reach $171 billion by 2024, more than double of $85 billion by 2019. The expected number can be even higher considering the second wave of the COVID-19 forced lockdowns in many countries.
According to the data, by 2024, even the steadiest growing apps in the App Store and Google Play will experience over 80% higher sales than the level of 2019.
App downloads
Global app downloads and the amount of time spent on mobile apps are rising. According to data given by Sensor Tower, app downloads have been increasing since 2015, doubling the global app downloads per quarter. The rising number of app downloads can be related to increased internet penetration, move to mobile devices, and their role in our lives.
Mobile ads spending
With the growing mobile app usage, mobile ad spends reached $240 billion in 2020. Consumer spending and mobile ad spend further triggered the mobile app revenues worldwide.
It is also expected that 5G will be the next front for the gamers’ spend.
Consumer time spent
With the closure of public facilities and no waste of time in traffic, people turned to mobile devices for communication, work, and entertainment. It is estimated that consumers, on average, spare 3 hours 40 minutes on mobile devices in 2020.
In 2019, users spent 35% more time on mobile compared to the previous two years. When we compare the time spent on mobile devices by the regions, emerging markets like Indonesia and India have the longest time spent on mobile per day.
The growing number of overall usage takes us to compare the mobile app vs website and proof the pattern.
Mobile apps vs. websites
When it comes to comparison, mobile applications outweigh websites by offering a more user-friendly interface. Although websites can offer similar features mobile software does, yet some functions can be used under the offline regime only in mobile apps.
On the other hand, apps give you the ability to use different phone features, like the camera, location, and many others while these features are limited on websites. Other than that, generally, apps work faster and offer better personalization for their users. For businesses, it is also easier to send people to push notifications, tap-to-calls/emails, device vibration/alerts through apps for real-time engagement. As a result, 86%of people tend to spend more time on apps, which makes a huge difference between them and websites. Thus, we conclude that apps are a better choice for businesses in comparison to websites if there is a choice to be made.
However, this does not neglect the chances of mobile-friendly websites to get to the forefront of the search engines.
All these data also bring us to take a closer look at the mobile app testing statistics and patterns behind them. The next part of the study focuses on mobile app testing and describing crowdtesting statistics.
Mobile app testing 2020
Although businesses allocate a large budget for software development itself, many of them fail to maintain their users due to several reasons, mainly poor user onboarding and overall bad experience. The report states that 94% of consumers uninstall mobile apps within 30 days of installation.
This raises the demand for mobile application testing to improve the quality of the product and launch the bug-free software as possible. Study shows that the mobile app testing market will make 19.5% CAGR value.
Crowdsourced testing during the lockdown
Later, our report broadly defines the rising crowdtesting market.
The unreadiness of businesses for various testing environments and networks accelerates the rise of crowdsourced software testing or crowdtesting in 2020.
Now, crowdtesting in mainstream tech development has evolved into an established and commonly used software testing model. It is, used by large and small businesses alike, as a budget-friendly and broad-reaching choice for anyone who develops software products. While there are benefits of an in-house testing method, crowdtesting has many more.
The next section of the research covers the global crowdtesting market share by regions and applications. The testing service value has different data for regions and countries. It is found that the top 3 regions dominate the crowdtesting market are US, Europe, and China.
Statistics only related to mobile usage and user spendings do not present clear data about software testing. To proof our statements about the impact of COVID-19 on mobile testing and overall software testing, lastly, we investigated website traffic of the leading crowdtesting platforms.
To get full insight and detailed data of the COVID-19 impact on mobile software and mobile testing you can download your free ebook below.
The impact of COVID-19 on the Mobile App Market and Mobile App Testing
Conclusion
During the current situation many of the businesses hit by the global recession due to the pandemic. Industries like mobile applications are among the ones that experience growth. With increasing app installs and the need for apps in daily life during a lockdown, demand for the mobile app testing market is increasing in parallel. Move from in-office working to remote has helped the businesses to scale their QA processes with more capable crowdtesting platforms. In our report, we analyzed patterns behind the rising impact of COVID-19 on the mobile app market and mobile app testing industry to guide you through all the changes happening in the software industry right now.