Last one about widgets, I promise. A game-in-a-widget made its way into the top charts this week, unsurprisingly, but it's not actually the kind of widget all the fuss is about.
Steve - The Jumping Dinosaur! is a simple tapping game in the old type of widget, the one that goes into the Today screen. Still, with this week's widget craze, having “widget” in your app's name is all you need, and Steve has it.
Downloads exploded, peaking at 255K estimated downloads on Sunday. Prior to iOS14, the game/widget averaged about 3K downloads a day. Impressive for a widget, but... that's an 85x increase in download overnight. For a widget.
Downloads on Android, which are considerably higher, have remained pretty flat.
December saw a curious split: downloads dropped 2% while revenue sat at $1.3B. ChatGPT and TikTok dominated both charts as the mobile industry enters a new maturity phase.
Wall Street bet $2 billion on Polymarket, and downloads surged 1,172% in December. The prediction market banned in 2022 is now where Wall Street looks for signals.