The fabled Grand Theft Auto video game series and dating apps like Bumble are among the top downloaded apps — paid and free — by Indians so far in 2023. Here’s a closer look.
Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto series figured among the Top 5 paid app downloads so far this year, according to research by data.ai. So far this year (till date from 1st January, 2023), GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas are the top two downloaded paid apps across platforms. Interestingly, four out of the Top 5 apps are games, while the lone non-gaming app is a productivity tool called Raistar Macro Onetap GFX Sensi.
According to data.ai, across all download platforms, GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas, Stickman Legends Offline and Hitman Sniper, in that order, are the most downloaded paid apps. While overall average rating shown in the table below reflects the lifetime ratings of the game/app, these figures are for downloads only since this year began.
Top paid app downloads in India (year-to-date)
| App | Category | Overall rating | No of ratings |
| GTA: Vice City | Gaming | 4.26/5 | 1,91,000 |
| GTA: San Andreas | Gaming | 4.56/5 | 7,92,000 |
| Raistar Macro Onetap GFX Sensi | Productivity | 3.76/5 | 1,400 |
| Stickman Legends Offline | Gaming | 4.40/5 | 2,62,000 |
| Hitman Sniper | Gaming | 4.08/5 | 9,00,000 |
GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas first released on PC and consoles in the early 2000s and have since made a comeback in the form of mobile ports and console remasters. Hitman Sniper is a companion game to the popular Hitman series of games developed by IO Interactive.
Interestingly, the top apps based on revenue presents a completely different picture, with just two gaming apps making it to the Top 5. The top five comprise two dating apps, Google One — the tech giant’s bundled cloud service — and the two aforementioned games: Free Fire MAX, which is at No 1, and third-placed Coin Master.
Top app downloads by revenue in India (year-to-date)
| App | Category | Overall rating | No of ratings |
| Free Fire MAX | Gaming | 3.45/5 | 1,56,00,000 |
| Chamet: Video Chat & Meet | Dating | 4.08/5 | 1,90,000 |
| Coin Master | Gaming | 4.41/5 | 82,30,000 |
| Google One | Software services | 4.12/5 | 4,32,000 |
| Bumble | Dating | 4.14/5 | 6,28,000 |
Data.ai does not provide actual information on the number of downloads or the revenue earned by each game as the data is collated from across platforms — consoles, Apple’s App Store, Google’s Play Store, etc, with the latter two not releasing their revenue figures.
The free app downloads categry hardly throws up any surprises, with social media and e-commerce apps, such as Instagram absolutely dominating the Top 5, although that could change if and when Meta rolls out its paid verification service, and when Twitter starts acting on CEO Elon Musk’s promise to weed out « corrupt » Legacy Verified accounts.
But as things stand, here are the Top 5 downloaded free apps in India so far this year:
Top free app downloads in India (year-to-date)
| App | Category |
| Social media | |
| Meesho | E-commerce |
| Snapchat | Social media |
| Flipkart | E-commerce |
| PhonePe | Payments |
It will be interesting to keep an eye on this final category as social media companies tweak their monetisation strategies. Will Instagram still be on top if you have to fork out a few hundred rupees a month for extra visibility? Only time will tell.
(Edited by : C H Unnikrishnan)
