Архив рубрики: TC

This Week in Apps: French developers sue Apple, time spent in apps grows, Instagram adds NFTs

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.
This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place, with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.
Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters
Top Stories
Mobile users are spending 4-5 hours per day in apps
Image Credits: data.ai
Looks like we’re all still addicted to our apps! A new report this week from data.ai (previously App Annie), found that consumers in more than a dozen worldwide markets are now spending four to five hours per day in apps. While the daily time spent in apps varies by country, there are now 13 markets where users are spending more than four hours per day using apps. These include Indonesia, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Russia, Turkey, the U.S. and the U.K.
And, in three of those markets — Indonesia, Singapore and Brazil — mobile users are spending more than five hours per day in apps.
While the growth in app usage has slowed a bit from the second quarter in 2020, it’s worth noting that two years ago was the height of COVID lockdowns, which drove app usage to spike across all categories as users worked, shopped, banked, gamed and studied, and attended meetings, school and events from home. If anything, that means the slowdown in growth seen in a couple of the markets is only representative of a normalizing of trends, not a larger decline.
And some markets saw significant growth in app usage over the past two years. In the second quarter of 2020, Singapore users were spending 4.1 hours in apps. Now that’s grown to 5.7 hours. In Australia, users went from 3.6 hours to 4.9 hours from Q2 2020 to Q2 2022. Both represent a 40% rise in time spent.
French iOS developers sue Apple over App Store fees
Image Credits: TechCrunch
Apple is facing another antitrust lawsuit over its App Store fees, this time filed by a group of French iOS app developers who are suing the tech giant in its home state of California. The plaintiffs are accusing Apple of anti-competitive practices in allowing only one App Store for iOS devices, which gives it a monopoly in iOS app distribution and the ability to force developers to pay high commissions on in-app purchases.
The complaint argues that these commissions, on top of Apple’s $99 annual developer program fees, cut into developers’ earnings and stifle innovation — and yet developers aren’t permitted to offer alternative payment methods per Apple’s App Store rules, nor can they distribute their apps to iOS users outside of the App Store, despite Apple allowing this on Mac computers.
The case is now one of several antitrust legal battles Apple is facing, including the high-profile lawsuit with Fortnite maker Epic Games, which is under appeal, and another by alternative app store Cydia.
Developers involved in the class action include Société du Figaro, the developer of the Figaro news app; L’Équipe 24/24, the developer of L’Équipe sports news and streaming app; and le GESTE, a French association comprised of France-based publishers of online content and services, including iOS app developers.
Of note, the case is being led by U.S.-based Hagens Berman law firm, which last year won a $100 million settlement against Apple over App Store policies and recently filed a $1 billion case against Apple over antitrust issues with Apple Pay. The lawyer involved also previously secured a $560 million settlement against Apple regarding e-book price-fixing and a $90 million settlement on behalf of Android developers. In France, Paris-based antitrust lawyer Fayrouze Masmi-Dazi is helping manage the claims.
New data on in-app subscriptions shows the first month is key

Subscription management service RevenueCat took a deep dive into more than 10,000 subscription apps across iOS and Android to see how subscription renewal rates stacked up. It found that monthly subscriptions had a median first renewal rate of 56%, which would increase over time. In other words, customers who didn’t get value from the app would churn in the first month — an indication of how important it is to convince users of that value in their first days using the service. In subsequent months, renewals were higher — 75% or 81% for the second and third months, for instance.
The company analyzed its own customer base data for the analysis, but notes it’s not showing all renewals on RevenueCat, as that would bias the data toward larger customers, like VSCO. Instead, it looked at the median of each individual app’s renewal rates.
In addition, RevenueCat developer advocate David Barnard pointed out that a lower renewal rate may not necessarily be a bad thing, depending on the business. For instance, if the developer was acquiring users organically at a low cost, a lower rate could be better than a higher renewal rate with expensive customer acquisition costs.

On the @RevenueCat blog today, my colleague Traci shares some benchmarks around monthly subscription renewal rates from 10k+ apps. With the dam finally (!!!) broken, we’re hoping to publish benchmarks more regularly from here on out. https://t.co/1BqTLFU6b1
— David Barnard (@drbarnard) August 2, 2022

Weekly News
Platforms: Apple
Apple is expanding its App Store ads. The company previously offered two ad slots, on the main Search tab and in the Search results. The new ad slots will be available on the App Store’s Today tab and at the bottom of individual app pages in the “You Might Also Like” section.
Bloomberg reported that iPadOS 16 will be delayed about a month as Apple works on its multitasking features. The report says this would put the release in October, alongside macOS Ventura.
A new report indicates iOS has lost 4% of ad spend market share since the launch of ATT, which makes targeting advertising more difficult for iOS developers. Its share dropped from 34% in April, down 4% YoY according to Adjust.
Digiday reports Apple may be building its own demand-side platform, based on a job posting looking for a senior manager for a DSP in its ads platform business. Apple’s DSP may be focused on serving ads on its own properties, like the App Store, but the company declined to confirm details.
Platforms: Google
Google revealed the finalists for the Indie Games Festival, which highlights some of the best games on Google Play. This year, the company is hosting the Festival in South Korea, Japan and Europe for local developers on September 3. At the European finals, Google will also reveal the 2022 class joining the Indie Games Accelerator, a program that provides indie game devs with training and mentorship.
Google offered a guide to Android developers as to how to support predictive back gestures, as it’s making an early version of the UI available for testing with Android 13, Beta 4.
E-commerce
Facebook’s live shopping feature is shutting down on October 1 to shift the company’s focus to Reels. After this date, users will no longer be able to host new or scheduled live shopping events, but they’ll still be able to use Facebook Live for other live events — but won’t be able to create product playlists or tag products in those streams.
Fintech
Coinbase partnered with BlackRock, which oversees $10 trillion in assets, to provide its institutional clients with access to cryptocurrency.
Starbucks Rewards, the coffee company’s loyalty program that doles out perks for customers’ purchases, will expand to include NFT rewards as part of a broader web3 push. The company said it’s being advised by Starbucks Mobile Order & Pay architect Adam Brotman on the effort, where NFT rewards will translate into exclusive content and “one-of-a-kind” experiences.
The SEC is probing trading app Robinhood’s compliance with short selling rules. The SEC has been investigating since October 2021 and requested additional info from the company in Q2 2022. Robinhood also announced headcount reductions of 23% after posting a $295 million quarterly loss. In addition, New York’s State Dept. of Financial Services fined Robinhood’s crypto unit $30 million for violating anti-money laundering and cybersecurity regulations.
An exploit in the Slope mobile wallet was possibly to blame for a major network attack that saw thousands of wallets drained of millions of dollars.
iOS 16 beta 4 added support for Apple Pay in non-Safari browser apps including Chrome, Firefox and Edge, likely in response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
Social
Image Credits: Instagram
Instagram expanded support for NFTs to more than 100 countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and the Americas after first launching a test of the new feature in May. Users will be able to connect their digital wallet, and share NFTs to the Feed, Stories or in messages. They can also automatically tag creators and collectors for attribution. The feature relies on Coinbase Wallet and Dapper integrations and the Flow blockchain.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri is temporarily moving to London to work from Meta’s King Cross offices as the company rethinks how to shape its plan to take on TikTok with Reels.
TikTok is on track to overtake Facebook in influencer marketing spend in 2022, and will overtake YouTube by 2024, per an analyst report. However, Instagram this year will still capture 3x the influencer marketing dollars as TikTok, or $2.23 billion versus TikTok’s $774.8 million.
The Washington Post reported video entertainment app Triller failed to make promised payments to a number of Black creators. Triller denied the claims.
Discord announced it will finally bring its Android app into parity with its iOS counterpart. The new Android app has been rebuilt with React Native, which will allow it to expedite new feature releases and bug fixes.
Pinterest missed on earnings and delivered zero user growth in its most recent quarter — it’s stuck at 433 million MAUs. The company cited a combination of factors for its issues, including the lingering impacts of the pandemic, reduced traffic from search engines, the rise of TikTok and — like many companies reliant on digital advertising, the broader economic environment. Still, the stock popped on the news (up 20% after hours) as revenue was close to expectations ($664.9 million) and the company was praised by new investor Elliott Investment Management.
Pinterest also began testing a new app, Shuffles, for collage-making and leaderboards. But the app, which includes image cut-out features and animation, requires an invite for the time being.
A top anonymous social app, NGL, which hit the top of the App Store earlier this summer, was forced to adjust its app to stop tricking users into thinking they had received messages from friends, when really a bot was delivering them. Both it and rival Sendit also changed their subscriptions to include more features than just “hints” about who was sending the messages.
Dating
Match Group said Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg is leaving after less than a year and it’s reorganizing the app’s management team after disappointing earnings. It also said it’s not moving forward with plans for Tinder Coins, its virtual currency, nor its plans for a dating metaverse. The company wanted to characterize this stoppage as merely a pause, but did not offer any sense as to if or when it would revisit these ideas. Instead, the company spoke of plans to introduce shorter-term subscriptions on Tinder while it tries to figure out why it couldn’t convince new people to try dating apps.
TikTok-style dating app Desti launched to match up users by fav date destinations, initially in its debut market of Austin.
Messaging
Kakao blamed Google’s new payment policies for a decline in the number of emoji subscription purchases on the messaging app KakaoTalk. The figure dropped by a third over the year, the South Korean app maker said in its quarterly earnings call Thursday.
Google is merging its Meet and Duo apps. Duo is being rebranded as Meet (the mobile app will be updated with the new branding). This will include features from both of the apps. Meet will be called Google Meet (original) and will be eventually phased out in favor of the new Meet. Not confusing at all!
Brazilian prosecutors asked WhatsApp to delay the launch of the Communities feature in Brazil until January in order to avoid spreading misinformation about the October election.
Streaming & Entertainment
Image Credits: Spotify
Spotify updated its app to address a long-standing user complaint with music playback — but it’s asking customers to pay for the fix. The company announced it will introduce a separate Play Button and a Shuffle Button at the top of albums and playlists to make it easier to play the music the way you like. This replaces the combined button available before. However, the new button is only being offered to Spotify Premium subscribers, despite arguably being a UI/UX issue that should be available to all.

Spotify wants users to pay for separate ‘Play’ and ‘Shuffle’ buttons

Clubhouse began beta testing a new feature, private communities called Houses, which allow a group of friends to hang out, catch up, hop from room to room and more. The Houses can be kept private and closed or users can each nominate a few friends to join.
Spotify’s biggest playlist is getting its own video podcast. The company said Brandon “Jinx” Jenkins, the podcast host of “Mogul” and “No Skips,” will host the new “RapCaviar Podcast.” The new video podcast will explore the rap genre and include panels of guests.
SoundCloud announced it was laying off 20% of its global workforce due to the challenging economic environment. Staff in the U.S. and U.K. will be informed if they’re impacted.
TikTok has been filing “TikTok Music” trademarks in global markets, suggesting the company is considering a launch of some sort of music streaming service similar to its existing service in select markets known as Resso.
Gaming
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
A new report indicates most mobile gaming genres saw revenue declines in the U.S. during the first part of the year. According to Sensor Tower, Arcade and Tabletop games were the only categories with revenue growth. Arcade was the fastest growing genre, with player spending up 14.8% year-over-year to approximately $176 million. Top games included Clawee, Gold & Goblins and Idle Mafia. Tabletop grew 1% YoY to $388.8 million. However, in terms of revenue, Puzzle was the largest with $2.3 billion, down 8.8% YoY. It was followed by Casino ($2.2 billion) and Strategy ($2 billion). Gaming downloads also declined 2.5% YoY to 2.4 billion.
Apple Arcade added a handful of new games to the service, including the popular Jetpack Joyride, as well as Amazing Bomberman, My Talking Tom+ and Love You to Bits+. The company also recently pulled 15 games from the subscription service.
Blizzard and NetEase scrapped plans for a World of Warcraft mobile game after a disagreement over financial terms for the title, Bloomberg reported. NetEase disbanded a team of more than 100 developers tasked with creating content for the game — only some of whom were given internal transfers.
Amazon’s cloud gaming service, Luna, which allows users to play on mobile, tablet, PC or Mac, now supports Samsung Gaming Hub on Samsung’s smart TVs and monitors.
Transportation & Travel
Uber partnered with the Berlin-based travel service Omio in order to test train and bus bookings in its U.K. app. Omio’s inventory includes more than 1,000 transport providers.
Utilities & Productivity
Google Maps and Search apps now allow merchants to label their businesses as “Asian-owned,” following similar additions that allowed labeling businesses as Black-owned, Latino-owned, veteran-owned, women-owned or LGBTQ+-owned.
Microsoft launched a new Outlook Lite app for low-powered Android phones aimed at users in emerging markets.
Government & Policy
The European Commission is investigating Google Play’s policies over possible antitrust issues, according to Politico. Specifically, the investigation is looking into billing terms and developer fees, the report said.
Security & Privacy
Security researchers found an error in more than 3,200 mobile apps, which would allow them to take full or partial control of Twitter accounts. The names of impacted apps have not yet been disclosed.
A ruling by European Union’s top court may have major implications for online platforms and apps that use background tracking and profiling to target users with behavioral ads or for personalizing content. It set a precedent that even this inferred data derived from things a company learned about a user could be considered personal data.
Funding and M&A
Dating app Desti raised $1 million in early-stage funding in July at a $5 million valuation. The company also makes a related app for friends, Besti.
Uber to sell stake its 7.8% stake in the food delivery app Zomato for $350 million+ after taking a $707 million loss on the deal in H2 2022.
Locket, a popular app that lets you post photos to your friends’ homescreens, raised $12.5 million in seed funding from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Sugar Capital, Costanoa Ventures, along with Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo.
Downloads
Banish

A new app for iPhone users can help you browse the web without being constantly bothered by pop-up panels that beg you to use the company’s app instead. The app, called Banish, is a Safari extension that helps remove the “open in app” banners from various websites and other popups that block content across a number of sites, like Reddit, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Medium, Yelp and some Google sites, to name a few.
While there are a number of similar Safari extensions for blocking cookie banners and ads, the scourge of the “Open in App” banners is often not addressed by existing solutions.
To use Banish, you’ll first install the app to your iPhone, then configure it in the Settings. This involves a few key steps for Banish to function properly. There are two places where Banish needs to be enabled, under Safari Extensions — you need to toggle on the switch next to Banish under “Allow These Content Blockers” and “Allow These Extensions.” Then you need to set the “Allow” permission to “All Websites” below. You can read more about Banish here on TechCrunch or download it from the App Store for $1.99.
 

This Week in Apps: French developers sue Apple, time spent in apps grows, Instagram adds NFTs

Amazon shuts down its personal file storage service to focus on photos

Amazon’s consumer-focused storage service, Amazon Drive, will wind down over the next year, Amazon announced today. In an email to users, the company said that it was taking the opportunity to “more fully focus” its efforts on Amazon Photos, Amazon’s answer to iCloud Photos and Google Photos.
Amazon Drive customers have until December 31, 2023 to save their stored files; as of January 1, 2023, file uploading will cease to work. Photos and videos will be transferred to Amazon Photos automatically, but other file types must be downloaded manually from the Amazon Drive web dashboard.
Users who currently subscribe to paid Amazon Drive plans can cancel their subscriptions now for a potential refund. Cancellation can be done on the web or through the Android and iOS apps — at least before the apps are removed from the Google Play and App Store, respectively, on October 31.
Amazon launched Amazon Drive as Amazon Cloud Drive in 2011, initially offering pay-as-you-need tiered storage plans both for Amazon Prime and non-Prime users. November 2014 saw the rollout of an API that allowed third-party developers to integrate Amazon Drive into their own apps to save things like game settings, preferences and other app state data in the cloud.
Unlimited plans for Amazon Drive were introduced in 2015, and then discontinued two years later. Storage became limited to 5 GB for non-photo uploads a short time afterward. Amazon Prime members and Fire Tablet owners, however. retained free unlimited photo storage.
Competition was likely a factor in Amazon Drive’s demise. After all, countless providers offer cheap cloud file storage these days, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and OneDrive. Amazon Drive’s pricing wasn’t even particularly competitive — the service charged $119 a year for 2 TB, the going rate for the same volume of storage at Dropbox and Google Drive.
According to Statista, Google Drive was the most popular cloud storage service as of September 2021, followed by iCloud and OneDrive.
Amazon shuts down its personal file storage service to focus on photos

Google delays move away from cookies in Chrome to 2024

Google is again delaying plans to phase out Chrome’s use of third-party cookies — the files websites use to remember preferences and track online activity. In a blog post, Anthony Chavez, Google’s VP of Privacy Sandbox, said that the company is now targeting the “second half of 2024” as the timeframe for adopting an alternative technology.
It’ll be a long time coming. Last June, Google said it would depreciate cookies in the second half of 2023. Before then, in January 2020, the company pledged to make the switch by 2022.
“We’ve worked closely to refine our design proposals based on input from developers, publishers, marketers, and regulators via forums,” Chavez wrote. “The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new … technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome.”
Google’s efforts to move away from cookies date back to 2019, when the company announced a long-term roadmap to adopt ostensibly more private ways of tracking web users. The linchpin is Privacy Sandbox, which aims to create web standards that power advertising without the use of so-called “tracking” cookies. Tracking cookies, used to personalize ads, can capture a person’s web history and remain active for years without their knowledge.
Privacy Sandbox proposes using an in-browser algorithm, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), to analyze a users’ activity and generate a “privacy-preserving” ID that can be used by advertisers for targeting. Google claims that FLoC is more anonymous than cookies, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation has described it as “the opposite of privacy-preserving technology” and akin to a “behavioral credit score.”
Privacy Sandbox has also prompted regulators to investigate whether Google’s adtech aims are anticompetitive. In January 2021, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the U.K. announced plans to focus on Privacy Sandbox’s potential impacts on both publishers and users. And in March, 15 attorneys general of U.S. states and Puerto Rico amended an antitrust complaint filed the previous December saying that the changes in the Privacy Sandbox would require advertisers to use Google as a middleman in order to advertise.
Google earlier this year reached an agreement with the CMA on how it develops and releases Privacy Sandbox in Chrome, which will include working with the CMA to “resolve concerns” and consulting and updating the CMA and the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office on an ongoing basis.
In the meantime, Chavez says that Google will expand a trial of its Privacy Sandbox technologies to “millions” of Chrome users beginning in August. It’ll then gradually increase the trial population throughout the year into 2023, offering an opt-out option to users who don’t wish to participate.
Google now expects Privacy Sandbox APIs to be launched and generally available in Chrome by the third quarter of 2023.
“Improving people’s privacy, while giving businesses the tools they need to succeed online, is vital to the future of the open web,” Chavez wrote. “As the web community tests these APIs, we’ll continue to listen and respond to feedback.”
Google delays move away from cookies in Chrome to 2024

Datch secures $10M to build voice assistants to factory floors

Datch, a company that develops AI-powered voice assistants for industrial customers, today announced that it raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Blackhorn Ventures. The proceeds will be used to expand operations, CEO Mark Fosdike said, as well as develop new software support, tools and capabilities.
Datch started when Fosdike, who has a background in aerospace engineering, met two former Siemens engineers — Aric Thorn and Ben Purcell. They came to the collective realization that voice products built for business customers have to overcome business-specific challenges, like understanding jargon, acronyms and syntax unique to particular customers.
“The way we extract information from systems changes every year, but the way we input information — especially in the industrial world — hasn’t changed since the invention of the keyboard and database,” Fosdike said. “The industrial world had been left in the dark for years, and we knew that developing a technology with voice-visual AI would help light the way for these factories.”
The voice assistants that Datch builds leverage AI to collect and structure data from users in a factory or in the field, parsing commands like “Report an issue for the Line 1 Spot Welder. I estimate it will take half a day to fix.” They run on a smartphone and link to existing systems to write and read records, including records from enterprise resource and asset management platforms.
Datch’s assistants provide a timeline of events and can capture data without an internet connection; they auto-sync once back online. Using them, workers can fill out company forms, create and update work orders, assign tasks and search through company records all via voice.
Fosdike didn’t go into detail about how Datch treats the voice data, save that it encrypts data both in-transit and at rest and performs daily backups.
“We have to employ a lot of tight, automated feedback loops to train the voice and [language] data, and so everyone’s interaction with Datch is slightly different, depending on the company and team they work within,” Fosdike explained. “Customers are exploring different use cases such as using the [language] data in predictive maintenance, automated classification of cause codes, and using the voice data to predict worker fatigue before it becomes a critical safety risk.”
That last bit about predicting worker fatigue is a little suspect. The idea that conditions like tiredness can be detected in a person’s voice isn’t a new one, but some researchers believe it’s unlikely AI can flag them with 100% accuracy. After all, people express tiredness in different ways, depending not only on the workplace environment but on their sex and cultural, ethnic and demographic backgrounds.
The tiredness-detecting scenario aside, Fosdike asserts that Datch’s technology is helping industrial clients get ahead of turbulence in the economy by “vastly improving” the efficiency of their operations. Frontline staff typically have to work with reporting tools that aren’t intuitive, he notes, and in many cases, voice makes for a less cumbersome, faster alternative form of input.
“We help frontline workers with productivity and solve the pain point of time wasted on their reports by decreasing the process time,” Fosdike said. “Industrial companies are fast realizing that to keep up with demand or position themselves to withstand a global pandemic, they need to find a way to scale with more than just peoplepower. Our AI offers these companies an efficient solution in a fraction of the time and with less overhead needed.”
Datch competes with Rain, Aiqudo and Onvego, all of which are developing voice technologies for industrial customers. Deloitte’s Maxwell, Genba and Athena are rivals in Fosdike’s eyes, as as well. But business remains steady — Datch counts ConEd, Singapore Airlines, ABB Robotics and the New York Power Authority among its clients.
“We raised this latest round earlier than expected due to the influx of demand from the market. The timing is right to capitalize on both the post-COVID boom in digital transformation as well as corporate investments driven by the infrastructure bill,” Fosdike said, referring to the $1 trillion package U.S. lawmakers passed last November. “Currently we have a team of 20, and plan to use the funds to grow to 55 to 60 people, scaling to roughly 40 by the end of the year.”
To date, Datch has raised $15 million in venture capital.
Datch secures $10M to build voice assistants to factory floors

US App Store revenue from non-game apps just topped games for the first time

A major shift in the U.S. app economy has just taken place. In the second quarter of this year, U.S. consumer spending in non-game mobile apps surpassed spending in mobile games for the first time in May 2022 and the trend continued in June. This drove the total revenue generated by non-game apps higher for the quarter, reaching about $3.4 billion on the U.S. App Store, compared with $3.3 billion spent on mobile games.
After the shift in May, 50.3% of the spending was coming from non-game apps by June 2022, according to new findings in a report from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. By comparison, games had accounted for more than two-thirds of total spending on the U.S. App Store just five years ago.
The trend was limited to the U.S. App Store and was not seen on Google Play, however. In Q2, games accounted for $2.3 billion in consumer spending on Google Play in the U.S., while non-game apps accounted for about $1 billion.
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
This shift in the U.S. app market is the most significant finding in the new report and demonstrates how successfully Apple has managed to create a subscription economy that allows a broader range of apps to generate sizable revenues.
The new data also supports this, as it shows it’s not only the biggest players that are benefiting from subscription revenue growth. In Q2 2022, 400 apps generated more than $1 million in consumer spending on the U.S. App Store, which is eight times the total from the same quarter in 2016. In addition, 61 U.S. App Store non-game apps generated at least $10 million in U.S. consumer spending in Q2 2022 — that’s more than the number of non-game apps that had generated $1 million+ in revenue in Q2 2016.
A handful of non-game apps also topped $50 million in U.S. consumer spending in the quarter, including YouTube, HBO Max, TikTok, Tinder, Disney+, Hulu and Bumble.
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
Subscriptions are the major revenue growth driver here, as non-game apps grew at nearly twice the rate  — at a 40% compound annual growth rate — since June 2014 compared with less than 20% for games, the report found.
The trend is a significant reversal of what mobile app spending looked like just a few years ago.
In 2019 and early 2020, for instance, mobile game spending growth was consistently higher than non-game spending. Game spending then surged again at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. But by late 2020, non-game growth had caught up and the gap widened in 2021.
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
While non-games are enjoying their new dominance, it’s not all great news for the app economy in this most recent quarter. The report also found that U.S. app spending overall declined for the first time in Q2, following the wind down from the spike generated by the pandemic.
At the start of the pandemic (around April 2020), year-over-year growth in consumer spending had jumped from around 20%-30% in 2019 to 35%-55% over the next 12 months. But in May 2022, U.S. spending declined for the first time as consumers began to shift their dollars back to other non-mobile activities like restaurant dining and travel.
Despite this decline from the pandemic highs, consumer spending in Q2 2022 was still up 71% over Q2 2019.
In other key findings from the quarter, summer travel drove travel apps to record high downloads in the U.S. and U.K., and airline app downloads in these markets were up 30%+ compared with Q2 2019, before the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the top-five ticketing apps saw 10 million downloads, up 70%+ from Q2 2019 as consumers returned to concerts, sports games and other events.
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
Worldwide app downloads slowed also slowed in the quarter, as installs totaled 35 billion in Q2, down 2.5% year over year. App Store downloads fell 1.3% to 7.8 billion and Google Play installs dropped 3% to 27.2 billion.
The most downloaded non-game app worldwide was TikTok, which has held the top position eight times out of the past 10 quarters. It was followed by Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat. TikTok (including Douyin in China on iOS) had 187 million downloads in the quarter.
The top mobile game globally was Subway Surfers, with over 80 million downloads — its highest total since 2014, and following the game’s maker Sybo’s acquisition by gaming giant Miniclip in June 2022. The number two title was Garena Free Fire with 70 million installs for the third quarter in a row.
China was still the larger contributor to iOS gaming revenue, despite a pause on game approvals in May 2022. In Q2, 65% of consumer spending on China’s App Store was on mobile games, while 35% was on non-game apps in Q2 2022 — percentages that remained unchanged from a year ago in June 2021. Japan’s App Store still generates the third-most gaming revenue on iOS and it maintained this position, though games’ share shrank a bit to 68% of the total spend, down from 70% in June 2021.
US App Store revenue from non-game apps just topped games for the first time