The r/wallstreetbets and "meme stock" news cycle in late January 2021 was a coming out party for retail investing and the apps that enable it. When Robinhood hit #1 Overall in the U.S. iOS App Store on January 27, 2021, it was the first time a retail trading app had done so. Apptopia's latest report, Trendlines in Retail Investing Apps, looks at the impact and how competitors have faired since then.
On Friday Kendrick Lamar announced his first tour in 5 years and presale tickets could be purchased via Cash App. This was no surprise after our findings in the Brand Relative App Growth Index (BRAG Index) revealed partnerships was a popular mobile marketing strategy used by top apps over the last six months. The savviest of apps, like Cash App and Chick-fil-A, thought beyond brand marketing and used partnerships to drive installs by lining up value on the other side.
The number of apps describing themselves and/or marketing themselves as "web3" is growing. Apptopia data indicates this trend started in 2020 and ramped up in 2022. The number of Web3 apps available for download is growing almost 5x faster in 2022 than in 2021. Year-to-date, apps available for downloads are up 88%.
The top 10 quick-service restaurant apps in the U.S. were downloaded 9.95 million times in April, 4.75 percent more than those the month prior. Year-over-year in the month of April, downloads of the top 36 quick-service apps are up 20.9 percent. A download represents a new user and the first conversion on the mobile app customer’s journey. The biggest mover from a ranking perspective is KFC, moving up eight spots from No. 16 last month into the No. 8 spot this month
First-time downloads of ‘pandemic-winning’ mental wellness apps in the U.S were 15% lower this April than in April 2019. By contrast, downloads in April 2020 were up 21% YoY from April 2019, which kicked off investor interest in the category. From June 2020 to May 2021, Calm, Headspace, Noom and Talkspace raised $963M in private equity and venture funding. BetterHelp, which we also included in this market, has been privately held by Teladoc since 2016.
Monthly active users of the top entertainment ticketing apps in the United States are up 511% year-over-year in the first quarter. Remember the trauma from 2020 when all events, including Taylor Swift, Doja Cat, and BTS concerts, kept getting canceled or rescheduled? The ticket marketplace was the only industry that felt the pandemic induced frustration more than you did. As the global entertainment industry took a massive hit due to state-imposed lockdowns, event ticket resale companies witnessed a record fall in downloads and active users.
As tech stocks cool off, the WSJ found speculative NFT investments are doing the same. Looking at market trends in Apptopia, we see net new installs of Veve Collectibles, an NFT marketplace and showroom, are down 99% since their high in mid-November. In-app purchase revenue for the app is down 90%. What are people purchasing on Veve? They're acquiring gems (the app's currency) which can then be exchanged for NFT collectibles on sale through the app.
As a market, Apptopia estimates the top six teen banking apps in the United States have seen downloads fall 26% year-over-year in the first quarter. Monthly active users have fallen alongside, but this is mostly due to the two largest players, Step and Greenlight, slowing growth while their competition has strengthened. Over the past five years or so, the explosion of financial tech (fintech) products and the importance consumers are placing on financial education have increased.
Even though the top eight live shopping apps have grown installs 123% YoY in the first quarter, performance feels lackluster when considering the venture capital investments made into these companies. Apps like Whatnot, NTWRK and, Popshop Live, act as a QVC right on users' phones, where they watch a live feed from a seller talking about an item, oftentimes accompanied by a live auction. In fact, QVC started its own live shopping app, likeQ, in December 2021.
The top 10 quick-service restaurant apps in the U.S. in March were downloaded 9.5 million times, 17.9 percent more than those the month prior. Year-over-year in the month of March, downloads of the top 36 quick-serve apps were up 13.4 percent. A download represents a new user and the first conversion on the mobile app customer’s journey. Apptopia only estimates first-time downloads and re-downloaded are not taken into account.
Crypto app installs grew by over 400% year over year in 2021 – but the gender ratio between male and female users has barely moved from 80:20 since the beginning of 2020. I reviewed demographic data from Apptopia's Audience Intelligence for the top 5 Crypto apps in the United States: Coinbase (Exchange), FTX, Crypto.com, Trust Wallet and Voyager. The one moment in time when one of these apps had an active female user base of more than 30% was July through November 2020, for Trust Wallet (owned by Binance).
BeReal is a social/photo app you designed to share your authentic life with close friends. Year-to-date, its monthly active users have grown 315%. The app launched in December 2019 but 65% of its lifetime downloads have taken place this calendar year. So what it BeReal and why is it different than other social media apps? Much like Dispo, which also launched in December 2019, the app's goal is to get away from detailed curation and professional influencers.
As you probably heard, Discovery and WarnerMedia are merging, which means streaming services HBO Max and Discovery+ are also merging, likely at some point in April. It's also possible that before they merge, they will engage in a bundle, similar to that of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. Assuming the apps merged today, we wanted to look at what the market share of the top 10 streaming subscription services in the United States would look like:
Retention rates for crypto apps remain steadily higher than stock trading apps in Q3 and Q4 of 2021. For example, crypto app retention sits at 32% on Day 1 in Q3 in 2021, while stock trading apps average at 19%. In our most recent report, Fintech deep dive: digital currencies 2022 playbook, we collaborated with marketing analytics platform, Adjust to dive into the key drivers of cryptocurrency app adoption in 2021.
The sneaker app market has witnessed a massive uptick since the summer of 2020, with both monthly downloads and monthly active users (MAU) seeing sizable increases of nearly 20%. This increase in popularity of sneaker apps (thanks to the spunky marketing that struck right when the pandemic iron was hot) has been characterized by two major trends: From the beginning of 2019 until mid-2020, monthly downloads for the top sneaker apps fluctuated around the 4 million mark, with the MAU reaching 16.3 million.
We recently released Travel Trendlines, which features data stories on the top Travel apps* over the last year, including which are the fastest-growing and why. Today, grab your sunnies – we are going through the U.S. performance data for Airline, Car Rental and Online Travel Agency (OTA) apps from the lens of Spring Breakers. Let’s set the scene first. This is not a typical Spring Break or family vacation year. Last February and March, students of all grades were taking classes from home.
Globally, demand for crypto apps has exploded, with new installs of the top 20 apps (wallets & exchanges) growing 902% YoY in the fourth quarter of 2021. In our most recent report, Fintech deep dive: digital currencies 2022 playbook, we collaborated with marketing analytics platform, Adjust to dive into the key drivers of cryptocurrency app adoption in 2021. For this same grouping of apps, the U.S. had a rate of 645%, while APAC registered at 475%. This is followed by EMEA at 284% and then LATAM with 182%.
Apptopia recently released the market report “Travel Trendlines” bookmarking the performance of travel market segments and applications in 2021. These analytics cover 6 broad categories—OTAs, hotels, airlines, car rental, and cruise lines for the U.S. market. We open with OTA apps, an outlier among Travel app categories for its accelerated _growth_ in response to the pandemic. It’s not to say that bookings did not decrease substantially, but people turned to the apps to reschedule, cancel and dreamily browse deals and destinations for when the world reopened.
Monthly active users of the top personal financial tracking and budgeting apps in the United States have hit an all-time high in February 2022. People are trying to get their shit together in 2022, and it could partially be due to TikTok. We're looking at apps like Mint, Truebill and EveryDollar. These apps help people organize and manage their personal finances. I think the combination of the r/wallstreetbets storyline last year, the rise of crypto in popular culture, and "finfluencers" on social media, has created more interest and more savvy in the personal finance space.
Today we bring you our latest market report, Travel Trendlines. It features data stories on 2021’s top Travel apps*, including which are the fastest-growing and why. The insights come from U.S. performance data for travel apps in the following categories: OTA (Online Travel Agencies), Hotels, Airlines, Vaccine Passports, Car Rental and Cruise Line apps. Highlights include Hopper overtaking Airbnb to lead market share among OTAs by monthly active users (MAUs).
