As of the growing download and use more phone applications from COVID-19 pandemic, MoMo e-wallet has reached more than 20 million users, becoming the largest e-wallet in Vietnam. (Photo courtesy of MoMo)
Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - The COVID-19 pandemic in the last half of 2020 saw Vietnamese people download and use more phone applications than in 2019, according to the Mobile Application 2021 report from Appota Group. Appota's annual series of mobile market reports, released on May 11, said TikTok boomed with 16 million downloads in 2020, making short video applications a new entertainment trend in Vietnam.
The report forecast the market for short videos will grow further in 2021 with the entrance of Instagram and YouTube.
The report also said the smartphone market was still led by Samsung and Apple while the mobile game market received a 40 percent growth compared to 2019, reaching 168 million USD in revenue and is expected to grow another 22 percent to reach 205 million USD in revenue by the end of 2021.
In addition, mobile e-sport games also showed signs of sudden growth amid the pandemic. Appota’s survey found that 80 percent of players said they spent more time using e-sports content during the social distancing period. On average, players spent 2 hours and 55 minutes a day playing e-sports games, while the average amount of time they spend watching livestreams or e-sports tournaments and related content is 2 hours and 10 minutes.
At the same time, food delivery applications also became more popular during the pandemic as the rate of food ordering from such apps grew from 58 percent in 2018 to 82 percent now.
The report also announced GrabFood, Now.vn, Go-Food, Bea Min as main players of the food order apps.
According to Appota, the e-wallet and e-commerce markets have also been aided by the pandemic.
In 2020, there were 121 start-ups operating in the fintech sector in the country, of which the e-payment sector had the largest number of start-ups, accounting for 31 percent, twice as many as the peer-to-peer lending sector at 16 percent.
The report found the pandemic and the push for cashless payments from the Government in 2020 resulted in a strong increase of e-wallet users, benefiting local firms.
The nation's largest e-wallet firm MoMo has reached more than 20 million users while VNPAY is valued at more than 1 billion USD, becoming the second “unicorn” in Vietnam.
The business to customer e-commerce industry grew 18 percent, reaching 11.8 million USD in revenue while mobile e-commerce enjoyed rapid growth, forecasting 7 billion USD in revenue for the year 2021 and likely to overtake desktop platforms in the next few years, said the report./.
VNA