By Andrei Skvarsky.
Lamudi, a two-year-old real estate portal focusing on emerging and frontier markets, says the number of visits to it from mobile devices has surged by an average of 32.17% since 2014.
Mobile visits hosted by Lamudi’s Asian websites have recorded the biggest growth in this period, 45.56%, according to a statement from Lamudi. The use of Android devices to access the company’s websites from Asia has nearly doubled in frequency. Android visits from Latin America and Africa have increased in number to 63.09% from 53.27%.
Globally, 80% of Lamudi app users are now using the Berlin-headquartered dot-com company’s app on Android, the Lamudi statement says.
Lamudi, which operates in 34 countries, cites U.S. information research and advisory company Gartner as saying that, in the first quarter of 2015, Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa were the fastest-growing regions for smartphone sales, with local brands appearing to be the top sellers.
Apps are increasingly popular in many developing countries as a form of interaction with online companies because of high local costs of Internet services, Lamudi says. Citing a 2015 global report by the Internet Society, an international Internet promotion organisation, the firm says more than 80% of online time on mobile is spent on apps.
“In our two years in operation, one of the biggest trends we have seen is the shift from desktop to mobile,” says Lamudi co-founder and managing director Paul Philipp Hermann.
“Consumers are moving straight to mobile devices, missing out the desktop phase altogether and instead favoring smartphones and apps,” he says.
“Reduced mobile connectivity costs, more affordable SIM cards and the evolution of mobile technology in less developed areas are driving mobile usage. With the development of initiatives such as Google’s Project Loon aiming to provide improved Internet connectivity to the more rural regions of countries including Sri Lanka and Indonesia, we expect that the shift to mobile will only strengthen.”
Lamudi, which is an online marketplace for sellers, buyers, landlords and renters to find or list properties and which celebrated its second anniversary in October, has more than 800,000 real estate listings across its global network, which includes countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
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