Indians Are Spending Over Four Hours a Day Staring at Mobile Apps: App Annie

Smartphone users in India are spending a large part of their day staring at their phones and going through different apps, a study has found. The app addiction seen in users in India is among the highest rated worldwide, the study added.

About 20 percent of Android smartphones users in India are spending over four hours going through different apps and mobile games on their phones, app analytics firm App Annie reports (PDF), equating it to half a workday. What is even more interesting, App Annie added, was that median users in its study also were spending about 2.5 hours on apps each day.

Even users who didn't show much interest in the apps, the report adds, they were still spending more than 1.5 hours on them. This insight is goldmine for advertisers and companies looking to target an engaging audience, App Annie said, which added that with further improvements in infrastructure and smartphones getting less costlier, adoption rate will only rise.

"This indicates strong adoption of apps even for the least-avid users in these countries, thanks to widespread adoption of apps such as WhatsApp and an emerging mobile-first lifestyle," the firm wrote.

App Annie didn't share which apps these people were spending so much time on, but noted that games were particularly common. The report found users in India among top in the world with this level of engagement. Other countries where users also showed much addiction to apps included South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, and Japan, which outstripped India. The top 20 percent of Android users in South Korea and Mexico for example spent 5 hours a day.

A report from Google late last year noted that new users coming online from India were showing a promising interest in learning more about programming. In fact, so much so that Google noted that more people in India were looking for mobile development courses online than people in any other country.