New Delhi, Apr 1 (IANS): Global app adoption and consumer spending on in-app purchases, premium apps, and subscriptions across the App Store and Google Play were both relatively flat year-over-year in Q1 2022.

Meanwhile, the average number of monthly active users in top apps grew 4.8 per cent Y/Y, with some categories, such as medical apps, more than doubling compared to Q1 2021, reports Sensor Tower.

In an analysis of the top 100 most-used mobile apps worldwide in each category, medical saw the highest Y/Y growth in usage with the average MAUs more than doubling in the top apps.

Navigation apps saw the second highest growth in usage, climbing 23.5 per cent Y/Y, and Travel came in third with nearly 19 per cent Y/Y growth.

This was a departure from the previous two first quarters, when business apps saw the most Y/Y growth in 1Q21, usage of the top business apps grew 95.3 per cent Y/Y and in 1Q20, the category saw 42.4 per cent Y/Y growth.

The uptick in navigation and travel app usage in 1Q22 can be attributed to consumers making more trips now that the pandemic is somewhat controlled in parts of the world.

The increase in MAUs among the top medical apps was mainly driven by a surge in usage of Covid-related apps such as Indonesia's PeduliLindungi, South Korea's vaccine passport app COOV, and Brazil's Conecte SUS.

It could also be a result of users becoming acclimated to turning to mobile devices for such purposes.