According to a new forecast by Sensor Tower, Europe’s mobile apps sector is set to grow to $20.8 billion (£16.7bn) by 2022, nearly $3bn (£2.4bn) less than previously expected.
The Sensor Tower forecast for music app revenue in 2022 has dropped from $873 million (£700.2m) to $665m (£533.5m), as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As revealed in the latest issue of Music Week, TikTok is experiencing a boom during the pandemic. Downloads of the TikTop app reached 14.1 million in March, up 6.8% on the previous month, according to Sensor Tower. A further surge could be recorded in April.
The mobile market insights firm said that the revision to its original forecast represents both the near and long-term impact of the pandemic on the European app economy.
App downloads are still expected to increased by 26.1% to 30.4bn across Europe between 2019 and 2022.
According to the forecast, the top European countries by mobile app user spending in 2022 will be the UK on $3.7bn (£3bn), Germany on $3.4bn (£2.7bn) and France on $2.4bn (£1.9bn).
Entertainment is projected to be the No. 2 revenue-generating category in 2022, overtaking social networking. Games is forecast to be the top category.
Russia is set to be the top country for app downloads in the region, picking up 6.6 billion new installs in 2022, up 24.8% from 2019. Turkey is predicted to rank at No. 2 in 2022, with 4.2 billion downloads, up 38.9% from 2019, while the UK will rank at No. 3, accumulating close to 2.7 billion downloads in 2022, up 21.9% from 2019.
In a separate forecast of the streaming sector, Futuresource expects the growth of subscriptions to be relatively unaffected across 2020 as a result of Covid-19. It projects a total subscriber count of 371m globally at the end of 2020, up 19% compared to 2019.
However, the current lockdown in most countries globally is set to have a deeper impact on the content consumption hours that each streaming service will be able to generate, according to the study.
To read the full report on how artists are embracing TikTok during the pandemic, subscribers can click here.
FOLLOW 
