Southeast Asian markets were among the strongest performers worldwide for e-commerce app growth in the first half of 2026, led by Singapore, with installs of shopping apps in the city-state up 67 percent year-on-year.
Singapore’s growth is the biggest one of any market tracked, according to a report released by app-analytics firm Adjust on Thursday.
The report said global e-commerce app installs rose just 2 percent over the same period, underscoring the strength of the Southeast Asian gains. Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia also posted double-digit growth of 42 percent, 36 percent, 16 percent, and 14 percent, respectively.
Global shopping-app sessions grew 15 percent year-on-year, with Indonesia and Singapore recording the strongest session growth of any market, at 62 percent and 58 percent, respectively.
Globally, the ratio of paid to organic installs reached 0.72, up 26 percent from 2025. Malaysia had the highest reliance on paid acquisition of any market, at a ratio of 1.11. Vietnam moved in the opposite direction, its ratio falling 54 percent to 0.89 from 1.92 a year earlier, and the Philippines’ ratio easing 34 percent to 0.73.
Singapore also ranked among the strongest markets for engagement and retention, with 16 percent of users returning a day after installing an app and 1.45 sessions per user on the day of installation, trailing only Japan.
Adjust pointed out that several Southeast Asian markets, including Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore, had cut the number of advertising partners they worked with, a sign of marketers concentrating spending on better-performing channels.
April Tayson, a regional vice-president at Adjust, said marketers with clear visibility into their best-performing channels and markets would be best placed to grow efficiently as acquisition costs rose.
Besides, Adjust report showed that Temu, the Chinese-founded discount app, ranked as the most-downloaded shopping app worldwide in the first half of 2026. Temu also led in most regions, including Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and North America, while SHEIN and Shopee’s Indonesian app took second and third place globally. In the Asia-Pacific region, Meesho and Shopee Indonesia topped downloads, ahead of Flipkart, Douyin’s shopping app, and Amazon.