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 Viet Nam. — Photo courtesy of MoMo

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 Tuesday, said TikTok boomed with 16 million downloads in 2020, making short video applications a new entertainment trend in Viet Nam.

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 per cent growth compared to 2019, reaching $168 million in revenue and is expected to grow another 22 per cent to reach US$205 million 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 per cent 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 per cent in 2018 to 82 per cent 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 per cent, twice as many as the peer-to-peer lending sector at 16 per cent.

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, becoming the second “unicorn” in Viet Nam.

The business to customer e-commerce industry grew 18 per cent, reaching $11.8 million in revenue while mobile e-commerce enjoyed rapid growth, forecasting $7 billion in revenue for the year 2021 and likely to overtake desktop platforms in the next few years, said the report. — VNS