The app market keeps on growing – 15 years after its launch, total downloads still managed to grow by 10 per cent in 2022.

So says the Top 5 Data Trends report by the app attribution platform company AppsFlyer.

Its a pretty remarkable result given the challenges facing the app space. The market grew fast during the stay-at-home pandemic period, but that ended this year. Then there was inflation, geopolitical unrest and – more locally – the on-going impact of Apple’s privacy/tracking changes. Despite all this, iOS installs grew 16 per cent.

The reports other key findings include:

• Ad spend down five per cent year on year
• Owned media ad spend up 45 per cent since April.
• Apps developers spent $80 billion on user acquisition in 2022, a slight YoY drop after the 40 per cent surge in 2021
• Gaming was the largest category grossing $27 billion, followed by Finance at $8.5 billion, Casino real money at $5.2 billion and Shopping at $3.4 billion (excluding China).
• Non-gaming apps enjoyed a 20 per cent jump in in-app purchase revenue while games dropped 16 per cent.