India records 200% spike in time spent on lock screens

Bengaluru: There has been a 200 per cent increase in the time spent on mobile lock screens in the past one year while an average user spends at least 25 minutes to consume content on Glance every day, a report said on Thursday.

Glance is the world's first 'screen zero' platform that uses lock screens of devices, especially smartphones, to deliver personalised, locally relevant, and live content to users.

According to the report by Glance, an InMobi group company, average smartphone users in India unlock their smartphones at least 70 times a day out of which 50 times they do it just to consume contents pushed on the lock screens.

"The India Lock Screen Report 2021 gives us powerful insights on mobile-first content consumption that's sweeping across metros and Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India," Bikash Chowdhury, Vice President - Marketing, Glance, said in a statement.

"We see strong momentum in these trends in 2021 as well and are confident that this year will be another solid year of growth for lock screen-based content platforms and short-video apps," Chowdhury added.

Post-dinner and before bed are the most preferred times for users for accessing lock screen content, the report said.

Entertainment, News and Nature/Wildlife emerged as the top three content categories on the lock screen platform while users' preference for digital content for few other sectors such as health and fitness; polls and quizzes also increased significantly.

The report found that there was a huge preference among the users for video content, which logged an impressive 182 per cent increase in consumption.

With people spending most of their time indoors following the outbreak of Covid-19, the demand for mobile gaming has seen a huge surge across categories with a 153 per cent growth in usage during the lockdown.

The report highlights the high degrees of experimentation among gamers in trying out new games with 41 per cent of them playing three or more games during a day, though the majority of them prefer free-to-play games. This has also resulted in a 26 per cent increase in the overall time spent playing games among users, not just from metros and large cities but from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities as well.