Apple's Latest Android App

Let's put trends on hold for a moment and talk about something that just happened.

AirTags have quickly become very popular, stealing the thunder from pretty much every other tracker out there (like Tile) by having a discovery network, in case a tag's lost, that's truly second to none.

They've become so popular that Apple did something it's normally reluctant to do. Apple made using AirTags possible on Android.

In its first week on Google Play, Apple's mostly brandless Tracker Detect app was downloaded 68 thousand times globally.

The US was responsible for 37% of those downloads, followed by Germany, Russia, the UK, and Canada. But the list stretched fairly long where we see a handful of downloads from Bulgaria and Romania.

Much like Apple Music and Apple TV, both of which are Apple-first apps (unlike Shazam) that have made their way into the Android ecosystem because Apple wants market share more than device sales, Tracker Detect is now another tool in Apple's growing arsenal of products that don't rely on an iDevice.

By this logic, I fully expect to see a standalone Android app to manage the HomePod come out soon.

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