Shopping habits changed in 2020. Instead of wandering into brick-and-mortar businesses, we spent hours window shopping on the internet. And, if you’re anything like me, you relied a little too heavily on that “Add to Cart” button for a quick rush of quarantine-style serotonin. The proof? Other than the pile of boxes in the corner of my room? US Shopping app sessions increased 65.9% YoY in Q4. A session occurs every time someone opens and uses an app. More sessions, more sales.
Just over a month ago, Google Pay relaunched with new features: tap-to-pay, peer-to-peer, personal finance aggregation, customizable deals, and other traditional banking services. Some have compared the app to Venmo, but I’d say that Google Pay is now more all-encompassing.
On December 5th - 6th, Netflix gave all of India a free trial called it “StreamFest.” The company ended up extending the offer another two days but we can already tell people have definitely taken advantage! StreamFest enabled the Netflix mobile app to hit its lifetime high in terms of daily global and Indian downloads with 1.3M and 800k, respectively.
HBO Max is now the fastest growing major streaming video service in the United States. Since its launch week in May, it has grown daily active users 242%. Three days after Max’s debut, the app hit a lifetime high for daily downloads with 225k.
Most people predicted that online dating would take a hit from the pandemic. And at first, they were right. The dating app market took a nose dive in March by almost all metrics. Daily downloads of the top 20 dating apps in the U.S. hit their lowest point mid-April, just breaking 150K (between all of 'em).
Top platform apps as a grouping have added more than half a million daily active users in the United States between November 2019 and November 2020. This is an increase of 21%. Platform apps are the apps contractors use to execute the services of companies like Uber, Grubhub, Instacart, etc.
We've picked out the top mobile app happenings from this Black Friday holiday weekend. We’re reviewing data in the United States from Thanksgiving day through Cyber Monday. Mobile app sessions of shopping apps in the US hit 1.29 billion, a record for the holiday weekend. The large retailers are first up.
Best Buy is in for their best holiday season yet. The company, which launched Black Friday deals over the weekend, is seeing huge app growth. Yesterday, November 24, the app achieved approximately 1.15 million daily active users, an all-time high for the app according to Apptopia record.* Last week was the first time the app hit the 1-million milestone.
The home security market typically sees an uptick in new users in December as people unbox their holiday tech gifts. But, apparently, security season came early this year. The top 10 home security apps gained more new users in October 2020 than any month prior,* about 4.5 million total. This represents a +22% MoM increase and a +72% YoY increase.
Both CNN and Fox News jumped to the top of the charts on election day. And both apps outperformed their 2016 performance. On November 8, 2016, CNN was #8 and Fox was #29 on the U.S. Top Overall chart for free apps on iOS. This past election day, CNN landed as #5 and Fox landed as #8. While CNN maintains a steady lead over Fox, Fox certainly saw the most growth between the two elections.
After one year of Disney+ being live on the app stores, Apptopia estimates it has been downloaded 100 million times globally, with 62% of those coming from the US and 38% from international markets. Global numbers do not include India, where Disney+ is built into the Hotstar app.
India has overtaken the United States to be Snapchat’s #1 market for downloads (new users). It took 15 months (from May 2019 to July 2020) for India to go from the #6 market, representing 4% of Snapchat’s downloads, to the #1 market, representing 20% of its downloads. That lead has been increasing as October 2020 saw India represent 32% of Snapchat’s downloads.
Since The Queen’s Gambit debuted on Netflix, mobile chess games appearing at the top of app store search results, as a grouping, have increased their average daily downloads 63% in the United States and 11% worldwide. The percentage change looks at the average daily downloads of 10 days prior to debut compared with that of debut day plus 9 days after.
It goes without saying that the restaurant industry has been hit hard over the past seven months. Many are unsure what the future holds for in-person dining, or what they should be doing to adapt to the current conditions. To ease some of this uncertainty, we teamed up with location technology platform Foursquare to create a clear, comprehensive picture of the dining landscape.
Amazon and Walmart are big rivals in the US but they are also big rivals in India where Walmart owns Flipkart and Myntra. Prime Day took place around the globe last week except for in India where major shopping happens around the holiday of Diwali. People don't just buy things specifically for the holiday though (clothes/home decor), but for everything such as computers, mobile phones, cars, bikes and more.
Globally, the top 10 Fast Fashion apps grew Q3 downloads 40% YoY. But what is Fast Fashion? Investopedia defines it as a term used by fashion retailers to describe inexpensive designs that move quickly from the catwalk to stores to meet new trends... it is not uncommon for fast-fashion retailers to introduce new products multiple times in a single week to stay on-trend. I will note that many people are against this industry as a whole for environmental concerns.
Best way to measure adoption is by looking at number of downloads. Downloads, or "new installs," equate to new users. This summer, Shopping apps were downloaded most in China, U.S., India, Brazil, Russia and the U.K. These countries, combined, make up 62% of global Shopping app downloads.
Voodoo was the hypercasual games publisher with the most new installs of its games in Q3 2020, having its games downloaded 105% more than its closest competitor in Lion Studios. The bottom half of the top 10 are grouped pretty close together but after #10, Rollic Games, there is a bit of a dropoff to Kwalee with 63 million installs. As a grouping, the top 10 hypercasual game publishers grew downloads 31% YoY. Only two of the top 10 declined during this period.
September ushered in another school year. But for many students and teachers, this required the adoption of virtual classes and digital tools. We saw this play out on mobile with homework-help apps– an Apptopia defined market of apps that provide immediate answers or explanations to homework questions. I'm sure you're thinking, "Back in my day, we called this cheating."
In spite of the pandemic, Planet Fitness recorded approximately 44% more app downloads in H1 2020 than H1 2019 (U.S. only). Meanwhile, other brick-and-mortar gyms saw major declines in new app users. The Equinox app, for instance, saw a -60% drop in downloads, and Gold's Gym saw a -45% decline.
