This is the second edition of This Week in Apps, a short, no-fluff, review of interesting things that happened in the last week across app stores. The world is on lockdown, and some apps are winning while others are bearly surviving. Here are our top highlights.
1. Uncharted territory. Popular sharing economy apps from Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft have hit the lowest number of downloads in a single day, ever, this week. Report
2. Diversifying. News consumption is through the roof, and App Store downloads are there to back it up. But, it's news aggregation apps News Break and Smartnews that are getting the lion share of the downloads. Report
3. More downloads than Amazon. Lockdown or not, someone still needs to buy groceries so you can make dinner. Instacart, a service that gets others to shop for you, has hit an all-time high, beating shopping king Amazon in the US. Report
4. Partying up. Houseparty, one of the less popular group-chat apps pre-apocalypse, has now taken the lead, skipping ahead of the more known Google Hangouts and Skype.
5. Back to normal. Looking at download trends from China's App Store, it seems things are slowly getting back to normal. Downloads are slowly going down across the board, which is the one time a decreasing trend is a good thing.
Check out the Mobile Download Index
6. Can I call you? You might have heard of telehealth apps over the last few weeks, and if so, you aren't alone. Downloads of Telehealth by SimplePractice and VSee Messenger shot up from around 100 a day well into the thousands.
7. Don't need folders. Microsoft Teams became Slack's top rival last year, and this year has completely left Slack in the dust as downloads grew by a factor of 8 over the last few weeks.
#204 - Amazon Prime revives a classic game's revenue, News apps are raking in the cash as are LinkedIn, Brawl Stars, and CapCut.
#203 - Short drama apps are the latest trend in streaming, Disney+ is in trouble, the most downloaded and highest earning games, and more!