According to the latest data shared by 9Apps Trends, Cricket-related apps have seen over 450% surge during the ongoing T-20 World Cup and the traffic peaked during the second week into the cricket season with India-Pakistan match adding to the frenzy. 9Apps is part of Alibaba Mobile Business Unit and one of the most popular third-party app stores in India.
As per the report of 9Apps, before the WT20 started, top 5 cricket-related apps were downloaded around 300,000 times per week; the download surged 340% once the World Cup kicked off. The trend coincides with schedule of the Indian cricket team. Take Hotstar TV Movies Live Cricket for example – the most trending cricket app. Since its launch on March 8th, the app has quickly made it to the top 20 in Overall Ranking on 9Apps Trends. Its daily downloads peaked and reached over 200,000 downloads on March 19th – the day India beat Pakistan in a league match.
Increased smartphone penetration and better network infrastructure is allowing millions of users to enjoy a cricket game on the go. Three of the top 5 cricket-related apps – Hotstar, Cricket T20 2016 Live TV and Cricbuzz provide videos and even live streaming of the matches. The content consumed by cricket fans is getting diversified as users’ appetite for video is fast growing, as pointed out by the report of 9Apps.
Sports app developers and content providers have updated their apps to bring world-cup-theme features and providing new content to attract users. For instance, UC Browser, the No.1 mobile browser in India with over 59% market share, has revamped its in-app widget UC Cricket to provide a variety of cricket content. It even provides web-based cricket-themed games for users to share the joy of cricket. 9Apps, the No.1 third-party app market of India, has also geared up with push notification features to remind users of the upcoming matches.
