Last week I looked at how revenge travel is sky-rocketing and how well we can see it translate into downloads. I looked at airlines, car rentals, and travel booking apps. And there were a lot of downloads.
Well, there's one "little" category I didn't touch on that's also seeing downloads exploding, and that's the category pretty much owned by Google, which is driving directions apps. And by that, I mean Google Maps and Waze.
Combined weekly downloads of Google Maps and Waze, both owned by Google, rose by 92% since January. In absolute terms, that translates into 4.8 million downloads last week, according to our estimates, which happens to be the second-highest week of downloads this year.
I'm not sure why this trend is called revenge travel, but what I am sure is that this is a great time for competitors to step up their mobile game and ride this wave instead of letting Google grow its user base even more.
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.