It's not every day that Apple's services crash, but this week they did and it was epic. Almost every day since the weekend Apple's built-in weather app showed no data to someone around the world.
People still need their weather, so instead of waiting for Apple, people headed to the App Store to resolve the issue on their own!
Although downloads for a few weather apps rose this week, The Weather Channel saw the highest increase, growing 566% and hitting the highest day of downloads this year and the second-highest since 2020.
Number-wise, that growth translates to roughly 80K new downloads on top of the expected downloads, according to our estimates.
I don't expect this wave to continue as Apple fixes its back end, but it's interesting to see how responsive users are to something like weather.
If you're a developer of a weather app, that means there's still room to grow in this category. Take advantage of this by optimizing your app.
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.