This Week in Apps is a short, no-fluff, round-up of interesting things that happened in the mobile industry. Here are our top highlights.
U.S. Mobile Download Index: App Store 86.27, Google Play 92.54
T-Mobile gave its Scam Shield app a serious update last week and made some useful features free. Disliking robocalls and unwanted calls, T-Mobile customers didn't think twice before downloading it, pushing the app to #1 the U.S. App Store and earning it an estimated 150,000 downloads across both platforms.
Basketball's back, and everyone is excited about it! So excited that they're subscribing to watch games using the NBA app at a rate like never before.
Last Thursday, the NBA's mobile app recorded a new all-time high earning $206,000 in a single day in the U.S. App Store according to our estimates. The previous all-time high, at the end of October of 2019, was $169,000, based on our app intelligence data.
Another winner from the NBA's restart is TV channel TNT, which has streaming rights for NBA games. On Thursday, TNT's streaming app started climbing the top charts in the App Store, where it's now #3 in the Entertainment category. They started the week at #130.
Last week I highlighted Pokémon Go's all-time high for single-day downloads, and this week there's another—Revenue! Excited for Go Fest, U.S. players showed just how much they love the game with their wallets. The game hit a new all-time high on Saturday, with an estimated $1.7 million in revenue in the U.S. App Store.
Overall, we estimate Go Fest weekend generated $4.9 million in revenue for Niantic and Nintendo.
While all eyes are normally on TikTok, another app has been gaining a lot of momentum, and revenue, by letting people live-stream their lives.
The app is called BIGO Live, and since the beginning of 2020, they've nearly doubled their revenue in the U.S. App Store - to nearly $2 million per week, based on our revenue estimates.
And yes, BIGO Live is owned by a Chinese company and has been banned in India.
That's it for this week. Get these insights by email by subscribing to the newsletter.
#228 - Gemini hasn't caught up to ChatGPT, Disney+ and Hulu see massive churn, X wins Black Friday, and our monthly ranking of highest-earning and most downloaded apps in November.
#227 - Netflix won the big fight, TikTok drives massive downloads for one game, games race to a billion, Bluesky overtakes X, and the upcoming mobile browser shakeup.