People today depend on their smartphones not just for communication and social interactions, but also for entertainment, banking and financial transactions, purchase of daily need goods like groceries, personal care to durables.
BARC and Nielsen together have put out a report to understand the changes in consumption behaviours of TV and Smartphones, respectively, given the extraordinary situation surrounding the COVID pandemic and its fallout.The report shows difference in consumption pattern from pre-covid period (11th January, 200 to 31st, 2020) to during-covid period (14th March to 20th March).
Peek into Smartphone Usage
The time spent on smartphone in week 1 of Covid-19 disruption has increased by 1.5 hours, on smartphones maximum increase in time spent is seen for 35-44 years. Tier-2 or Mini metro class cities such as Agra, Ajmer, Aligarh, Allahabad, Amravati, Amritsar, Asansol, Aurangabad, Bareilly have also shown an increase of +8%.
News User Base
There is a sharp change of behavior in the digital consumption of News and Gaming according to the BARC and Nielsen report. News apps saw 8% more users per week with an increase of 17% in time spent/user/week. Gaming apps saw an increase of 2% in users/week and with an 11% increase in time spent/user/week.
With a lot of uncertainty around what is happening, people have increased their time spent on Chatting (+23%) and Social Networking (+25%) apps. Almost all social networking apps – Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have seen significant increases not only in time spent /user/week but also in the sessions/user/week.
Expectedly Covid-19 has drastically dropped down in the case time spent/user/week in the Shopping Apps, Travel Apps and Food Apps.
The impact of news consumption on smartphones trickles down beyond metros, if you see mini-metros have gone up to +30%, not just news apps but also the news websites were also visited by 26% more users while the number of website visits per user went up by 29%.
As the situation continues to evolve in the coming weeks, do we get to see a major change or no change at all, only time will tell…
