📲 The state of mobile in 2022
The annual report by App Annie is not surprising in many ways but gives some clues as to how the mobile market it evolving.
👋 Welcome to FWIW by David Tvrdon, your weekly tech, media & audio digest. You will notice that the design is less purple, it’s because those headlines were images and took up space, so there is less purple and more content. Hope it’s OK.
In this edition
The state of mobile in 2022
EV sales for 2021 (Norway no.1, China biggest, Tesla at top)
Media & Tech trends for 2022: subscriptions, audio, newsletters
7 of every 10 minutes on mobile in 2021 was spent in social and photo & video apps
App Annie, the mobile data and analytics platform, published its annual State of Mobile 2022 report. TL;DR consumers spent $170bn in 2021 on mobile apps, that’s up 19% year-over-year.
The report has worldwide data and some that country-specific - the most interesting to look at from a European perspective is that of Germany.
Here are some highlights:
On average, users spent 4 hours 48 minutes per day on mobile in 2021. In Germany, it was 3.4 hours. According to data from 2019, Germans spent 3.52 hours watching TV, Europeans spent on average 3.65 hours. Not surprising that on average people spend more time on mobile.
Consumers spent globally $170bn, mainly in mobile games and in-app subscriptions. Users spent $116bn in mobile gaming.
Most hours spent are with social & communication apps.
Publishers released 2 million new apps and games in 2021. Total of apps and games ever released on iOS and Google Play is now more than 21 million.
233 apps & games generated more than $100m annually in 2021, 13 surpassed $1bn.
Although retail banks are widely used by Gen X and Baby Boomers, Gen Z are most likely to use trading and crypto apps and neobanks across regions.
Time spent in shopping apps rose 18% year-over-year, with strong movement in fast fashion, social shopping, and mobile-savvy big-box players. (We should be not happy about this as a society…)
Total hours spent watching video streaming apps grew 16% worldwide since pre-pandemic levels. The report also notes that exclusive content releases drive spikes in video streaming app downloads.
YouTube remains worldwide the leader in video streaming, followed by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and YouTube Kids.
Walking & fitness apps are most popular among older groups, while meditation apps more likely used among Gen Z. Feminine health apps (period trackers) top the chart for Gen Z and Millennials.
Calm remains the most downloaded meditation app both in 2020 and 2021 worldwide, with Headspace and Meditopia rounding out the top 3.
TikTok was a standout winner in per user engagement among the top 5 social apps commanding the most time spent in 2021. It is notable that TikTok has seen the greatest in depth of engagement over 4 years and had a standout year in 2021, on the back of an already record-breaking 2020. I mean, look at the chart (!).
Thanks to the pandemic and the resulting isolation and WFH, dating apps have seen a 95% spend increase since 2018. Tinder tops the chart, followed by Badoo.
And here are the top apps and top games:
TECH
👀 Some [not boring] patent news. IBM retained no. 1 position in getting US patents last year and Huawei received 2,770 US patents last year, putting it at no. 5 after Samsung, Canon and TSMC. Intel is at no. 6, followed by Apple, LG, Microsoft and Qualcomm. Artificial intelligence and machine learning remain the top-growing areas for innovation. Telemedicine, new seed varieties and supply chain logistics also are among the fastest-growing areas. [Bloomberg]
📉 Economists mostly agree that tech is making inequality worse. Expect to see more articles like this warning that the current state of automation is not driving enough alternate new jobs. [NYT]
😮 Apple promises third-party payment options in iOS for South Korean users. The details are unclear at this point. Still, this is big news and might open the floodgates all around the world for similar action (looking at you, European Commission). [The Verge]
👋 WhatsApp co-founder, Brian Acton, named interim CEO of Signal. Moxie Marlinspike, who's been at Signal for almost a decade, said in a blog post he feels comfortable replacing himself as CEO now, based on Signal's growing team and success. [Axios]
Signal's cryptocurrency feature has gone worldwide. A beta “payments” feature now lets users of the popular encrypted messaging app send MobileCoin around the globe. The move was critizied by some.
🚗 Overall new cars sales in Norway rose by 25% in 2021 to a record 176,276, of which 65% were fully electric. This market share was up from 54% in 2020. Only about 8% of new cars sold in the country ran purely on conventional gasoline or diesel fuel. Tesla was the best-selling brand ahead of Volkswagen in 2021 with Tesla's Model 3 most popular model overall. Oil-producing Norway has encouraged the switch to zero emission cars by exempting battery electric vehicles (BEVs) from taxes imposed on internal combustion engines (ICE). This tax break is expected to help drive the proportion of overall electric sales as high as 80% in 2022, ahead of a deadline to end petrol and diesel powered car sales by 2025. [Reuters]
Electric-vehicle sales in China jumped 160% to a record 2.91 million units last year, thanks to manufacturing quotas set by Beijing
📈 Worldwide PC shipments grew 15% year-over-year in 2021, with 341 million units sold. [TC]
📉 Bitcoin dipped below $40,000 for the first time since September 2021. The decline is the largest for a start of the year since at least 2012. It has slumped more than 40% since reaching an all-time high of almost $69,000 in early November. [Bloomberg]
🤨 EU plans law requiring tech firms to do more to combat child abuse. EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told Germany's Welt that she will propose legislation in the coming months that will require companies to detect, report, and remove child sexual abuse. [Reuters]
MEDIA
9️⃣ Nine media & tech trends you need to know about from Reuters Institute predictions for 2022. The focus will continue to be on subscriptions and memberships but a vast majority of media managers said audio, newsletters and digital video are a big priority for them. [Journalism.co.uk]
Here is the whole report: Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2022
🤔 Why the New York Times is buying the Athletic? In short: The NYT wants more subscribers. The Athletic has lots of subscribers but loses money. [Vox]
💡 Substack is introducing a new program for writers to connect and support one another. A month-long program will connect Substack writers and help them kickstart a publishing habit in 2022. Substack will host 500 writers across categories and stages for this free program. [Substack]
📱 How to make your own animated GIFs on your Android or iPhone. Nicely explained. [NYT]
🤦 The Associated Press is starting its own NFT marketplace for photojournalism. AP isn’t the first journalistic enterprise to use or express interest in NFTs. Quartz and The New York Times have sold copies of their articles as NFTs, and Getty Images’ CEO Craig Peters said in December that there’s “a real opportunity” for the company when it comes to NFTs. [The Verge]
🧢 Apple has had substantial talks about carrying Major League Baseball games next season. MLB has also held talks with Barstool Sports and Amazon for rights, which were most recently held by ESPN. Not that this is particularly interesting or new in itself from the European perspective, but the more important takeaway is how agressively tech companies and streaming platforms are trying to get exclusive rights for streaming live sports events. Maybe one day, NYT will want to go after some sport streaming rights for the Athletic. In my opinion, it would make sense, some Scandinavian publishers are already doing this. [NYP]
📺 The Oscars will return with a host, three years after it last had one. Jimmy Kimmel was the last person to host the Oscars in 2017 and 2018. Kevin Hart was set to host in 2019 but dropped out after old tweets resurfaced, forcing the 2019 show to go hostless. [Deadline]
🤓 Need help navigating change in your newsroom? Khan Academy has some ideas. This is a useful case study. Also, as many case studies like this pointed out several times before: communicate, communicate, communicate. It’s a mistake many leaders are making, not just in media. [NiemanLab]
FROM THE FIX
2️⃣ What to look ahead for news media in 2022
3️⃣ 10 biggest stories in media in 2021
4️⃣ A look back at stories that shaped the European and global media landscape in 2021
[ 📬 Get The Fix newsletter delivered to your inbox every week with the latest insights, news, and analysis about the European media market. Sign up here > ]
AUDIO
😂 LinkedIn is launching its own version of Clubhouse. A year later than it was announced. I think it actually might work for that community. We’ll see. (TechCrunch)
🥺 Podcasting hasn’t produced a new hit in years. The average podcast in the top 10 is more than seven years old. A good observation, still thinking whether this is a sign of a mature podcast market or something else. For example, the top spots in podcast charts in Slovakia are not cemented and keep changing. [Bloomberg]
✨ Spotify launched (US only) call-to-action cards for podcast ads. CTA cards will appear in the app as soon as a podcast ad begins playing, and will resurface later on while you’re exploring the Spotify app. [Spotify]
GAMING
💬 How Discord became the go-to communication app for gamers. Seven years ago, Discord was in a very different place. For one, the company was called Hammer & Chisel - and it was a game development studio. Though it was favourably reviewed by critics, the game struggled to attract users, who weren't gravitating to tablet gaming. But one thing was working: the game's text & voice chat feature. In early 2015, CEO Jason Citron decided to pivot, betting the company on this chat tool, which he called Discord. [Launched]
💰 Take-Two Interactive, the video game publisher that owns Rockstar and 2K Games, is set to acquire social game developer Zynga in a deal valued at $12.7bn. The deal may be the biggest in video game history. The cash and stock transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023, pending regulatory approval. [The Verge]
🎮 Sony is dealing with Playstation 5 shortage by making more PS4s, makes sense. [Bloomberg]
OTHER
🥰 If you are looking for a heartwarming story, this is it. Sadie Jean, a singer-songwriter and a sophomore at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music recorded an original song and put a duet version on TikTok only with one singer and invited people to become her co-singers for the other part. Surprisingly, it became a TikTok hit and peaked when Lil Yachty, a famous American rapper took up Sadie on her challenge. [NYT]
🧩 The word game Wordle has gone from dozens of players to hundreds of thousands in a few months. Now it has 2 million players. It was created by a software engineer in Brooklyn for his partner. It is super fascinating how simple it is. [NYT]
❓ Poll: Do you plan to buy an electric car?
🙌 Thanks. I used HandyPolls to create this poll (instructions).
Last poll results: What are you looking forward in 2022? 24% reading more books; 17% new technology and 14% new software and apps. Only 9% watching more Netflix, Disney+…
🙏 And big thanks to Celine Bijleveld who helped me edit this newsletter. You can follow her on Substack here.