iPad app downloads see first positive quarterly growth in four years

Driven by a surge in use and adoption of the device during the COVID-19 pandemic, quarterly first-time downloads of apps for Apple’s iPad surpassed 1.1 billion worldwide in Q1 2020, SensorTower reports. This marks the first year-over-year growth in this metric since the fourth quarter of 2013 and a 40 percent increase from Q1 2019.

Randy Nelson for SensorTower:

At the same time, Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data reveals that quarterly global consumer spending in iPad apps saw its largest Y/Y increase since Q4 2014 at 16 percent, while crossing the $2 billion threshold for the first quarter ever.

Last quarter’s total of new app installs on iPad was its largest since Q3 2016, when consumers worldwide downloaded an estimated 1.16 billion iPad apps for the first time. One year ago in Q1 2019, first-time iPad app downloads were down 19 percent Y/Y.

More significant than the 40 percent Y/Y growth in new iPad app installs in Q1 was the 52 percent quarter-over-quarter increase from Q4 2019, when the total number of downloads reached approximately 735 million globally—379 million fewer than last quarter.

Monthly installs of iPad apps also reached their highest level since February 2015 last month, when they climbed to nearly 438 million, a Y/Y increase of almost 72 percent and month-over-month growth of about 21 percent.

While iPad app installs reached levels not seeing in several years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer spending in apps on Apple’s tablet platform last quarter crossed a major milestone. Consumers spent an estimated $2.1 billion in iPad apps globally during Q1 2020, six years after quarterly spending crossed the $1 billion mark in Q1 2014. About 76 percent of this, or approximately $1.6 billion, came from games.

As we witnessed with downloads, Education saw the sharpest Q/Q increase among iPad categories in terms of spending worldwide, increasing 35 percent over Q4 2019 to about $92 million.

MacDailyNews Take: Every cloud has at least one silver lining. One bit of good news to come out of this COVID-19 pandemic will be a greater appreciation, and use, of iPad, iPadOS, and iPad apps.