It’s certain that the spread of the coronavirus has changed a lot, and many will be looking to just how our new ‘normal’ will flex back once lockdown efforts are eased completely and we return back to a way of life as it had been before, but how have our habits changed in the short term in the mobile market to fill our suddenly quiet days?Streamed media – We’ve already seen a huge change in demand for streamed media through platforms such as Netflix and Twitch, the content giant Netflix had even mentioned that to cope with the increased demand and bandwidth requirements in certain parts of Europe, some ultra HD capabilities would be disabled in order not to cause further issues on an already strained ISP infrastructure. At a similar time, a new service was launched by Disney+ further increasing traffic for streaming platforms, whilst it is expected that the growth will slow a little, but it does seem with some trends showing that this increased traffic will remain for some time.

Gaming – There has also been a sharp rise in gaming across all platforms during this period of time – this can be seen on PC primarily through some of the platforms that track concurrent users which has only been increasing over the past few months – some are suggesting the increases could be upwards of 20% on these platforms.

Mobile gaming has also been at the center of this despite some challenges to overcome – the launch of an initiative in the UK called Gamstop has led to many players unable to participate on certain sites, but to combat this many sites have been popping up outside of the UK where full and thorough reviews of jackpot charm and similar sites have provided a place for players to go to during lockdown – mobile gaming makes up around 50% of the entire market, and the new players who have been introduced during this time are expected to remain playing afterwards accelerating the growth.

A struggling market – Despite the increased user activity across many different parts of mobile use, one thing that is already happening has been a market flex where sales have begun to drop, some suggestions are that shipment and sales of mobile devices could currently be down by 40%. This had been somewhat expected, as consumer markets across the world are also reacting to the changes brought around by the coronavirus – there’s uncertainty where recovery will be found here, but the immediate impacts are already being felt.

Despite the ongoing issues, mobile usage will continue to see a lot of growth and as mentioned many of the forecasted figures are expected to be accelerated by an increasing audience, many will be looking closely at the data that will start rolling in over the next few months to assess just where mobile habits have landed, but early signs are promising and look to remain strong moving forward as recovery is still measured and unchanging for some.