Sharing at the first Google Think Apps event held in Vietnam on the afternoon of July 20, Mr. Marc Woo, Director of Google Vietnam, said that from 2019 to the first quarter of 2023, Vietnam has made a leap from the top 15 to the top 5 in terms of app downloads globally.

Specifically, with 4.2 billion downloads of applications released by Vietnamese developers downloaded from countries around the world, Vietnam ranked 4th. This statistic is given from the report of DataAI & APPMagic.

The report also shows that Vietnam is growing 2.5 times faster than other countries in the world.

According to Mr. Marc Woo, in 2022, revenue from the In App Purchase feature in applications developed by Vietnam increased by 20%, while global revenue in this segment decreased by 2%. Notably, there are 93 game and application development companies in Vietnam owning 171 applications, which have at least once successfully entered the top 10 most downloaded applications weekly on the Play Store. There are 4 application developers in Vietnam in the Top 50 global companies with new applications exceeding 100,000 downloads in 2022, including Falcon Global, ABI Global, Zego Global and Rocket Studio.

The Google representative said that Vietnam has changed and adapted faster than the world, as revenue from applications and games continues to increase, despite a global downward trend. At the same time, Vietnam has emerged as a hub for leading developers, strengthening its reputation as a powerhouse in the application development industry.

At the same time, Google is committed to continuing to support developers in Vietnam from building the future, creating applications and games that are useful to society, as well as supporting the development of domestic programmers.

At the event, Mr. David Kim, CEO of Data.ai, also shared that in 2022, the world recorded 255 billion new application downloads, application demand increased by 4% from January to May 2023, the game segment decreased growth by 3%, but the application segment still increased by 8%.

In the gaming field, he advises Vietnamese developers to focus on Hyper Casual, as revenue from games in this genre still accounts for a high proportion in the world, and the game genres that programmers should develop further are racing, sports, and fashion.

In addition to games, utility and support applications have seen their search rates double in 2023. Mr. David Kim also said that in 2023, Vietnam needs to focus on applications such as social networks, photos, videos, entertainment and finance, because in reality, this field is still not much. Notably, tool-based applications have also grown by 14% compared to last year, which is also something developers should pay attention to.

“The app industry is recovering from the pandemic, with demand for non-game apps increasing sharply. However, developers need to adopt new technologies such as artificial intelligence and combine multiple business methods to create sustainability,” said David Kim.

Sharing the same view, Ms. Emily Nguyen, Director of Google's games and applications business in Vietnam, also said that Vietnamese developers are facing many challenges such as: Loss of momentum in the number of downloads, slower growth in IAP revenue and eCPM (estimated revenue received for every thousand ad impressions) is decreasing, and user engagement is also decreasing by 5% (according to data up to the end of the first half of 2023).

Therefore, developers in Vietnam should apply advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence to produce highly competitive products; be more open in updating market trends to find new opportunities in new markets; improve consumer quality, improve product quality, especially in design and gameplay. With Think Apps this time, Google will help domestic developers solve these problems.