In just four years, the capacity required for China's most downloaded iPhone app has increased nearly 10 times

Have you noticed that your iPhone has been reminding you that the memory is insufficient more frequently in recent months? In addition to the huge space occupied by photos, videos, iMessages, etc. on your Apple phone, the size of apps is also increasing. The latest data from Sensor Tower's App Intelligence platform shows that the storage required for the 10 apps that were downloaded the most by iPhone users nationwide in 2017 and launched before February 2014 increased from 260MB four years ago to 2.84GB in February this year, an increase of 992%. Which apps have the largest increase in size? Is there a similar pattern in the expansion of mobile game apps? We will reveal them one by one in the following analysis.

| The most significant volume growth began in summer 2016

The above chart clearly shows the expansion of the 10 most popular iPhone apps in China over the past four years. Since February 2014, the most significant increase occurred in August-September 2016, just in time for the release of iOS 10. There was also a small increase from June to July 2015.

From the data we have compiled, we can see that the size of these apps increased slightly before July 2016, and the additional capacity required for each adjustment or update was basically less than 10MB. From August to September 2016, the size of six apps increased dramatically, ranging from 24MB for iQiyi to 61MB for Taobao. In September, when iOS 10 was officially released, five apps including WeChat, QQ, JD.com, and Meituan also experienced an increase of 37MB to 56MB.

In such a short period of time, the size expansion of many apps was accompanied by the release of a series of new features that consumed space. For example, in August 2016, Tencent Video launched a new VIP channel, and competitor Youku Video also upgraded its user personal center and debuted a member channel. Alipay, which increased in size by 55MB, revamped the App homepage, added a smart voice assistant, and upgraded the user personal homepage. Amap, which expanded by 56MB, also added updates such as Hawkeye Map, arrival reminders, driving navigation optimization, and voice control prompts. In September, WeChat and QQ launched updates such as GIF animations and short video face-changing features, respectively, and Meituan also added new features such as picture notifications.

The small-scale increase in the summer of 2015 was mainly due to the fact that Taobao, WeChat, Tencent Video, and JD.com all increased their space by more than 23MB in June. For example, Taobao, which had the largest increase, launched a new version of Taobao Mobile in June 2015, including community, shake and other new features, which caused its space requirement to soar from 59MB to 96MB in one month.

| IQIYI has the largest expansion scale, with the capacity required last month being 33 times that of four years ago

Further analysis found that iQiyi's growth rate over the past four years was the largest among the above ten apps. Its required capacity in February this year was about 401MB, which is about 33 times the 12MB in the same period four years ago. It is worth noting that iQiyi has expanded from the second smallest four years ago to the second largest four years later, which can be regarded as a typical example of rapid growth among the ten apps. Next to iQiyi is the Meituan App, which required 28 times the space four years ago. Youku Video, JD.com, and Tencent Video are the other three iPhone apps that have increased in size more than ten times. It is worth mentioning that JD.com is the app that took up the most space among the ten apps last month, reaching 422MB (only about 23MB four years ago). Amap had the smallest increase, from 37MB to 217MB, an increase of nearly 500% over the past four years.

| The size of the popular mobile game "Honor of Kings" has increased by nearly 260% since its launch

During the two and a half years that Honor of Kings swept the country, the storage required for the iPhone version of Honor of Kings started from 360MB in October 2015 and gradually expanded to 1.28GB last month. The most significant surge also occurred when iOS 10 was released: the size of Honor of Kings soared by 147MB in September 2016, which was the largest expansion in its history. Analyzing the updated features launched by Honor of Kings at that time, it is not difficult to see a series of new content behind the 147MB: map updates, reservation functions, multiple sets of customized equipment plans, etc. About a year later, in October 2017, the space required for Honor of Kings exceeded 1GB and is currently at about 1.3GB.

The second-largest mobile game in iPhone downloads last year, Happy Landlord (launched in August 2013), has grown in size by about 450% in the past four years, a higher increase than Honor of Kings. However, since Honor of Kings is a graphic-intensive game, the absolute value of the space required for Happy Landlord is much smaller: it took up 45MB after downloading in February 2014, and now it has risen to 249MB four years later, which is more than 100MB less than when Honor of Kings was launched in 2015. However, a similar size growth trend was also prominent in September 2016 when iOS 10 was released: Happy Landlord increased by 112MB in one month, and the space required exceeded 200MB for the first time during this period.

| iPhone slimming methods are diverse, giving users more choices

With the advent of iOS 11, Apple launched a series of new features in September last year to help users save iPhone storage space, including uninstalling unused apps, automatically deleting old iMessage conversations, and checking large attachments. The three new iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X that were unveiled at the same time also launched unprecedented 256GB models, giving Chinese consumers more choices to accommodate the ever-expanding Apps.