Black Friday felt different this year. Not bad, with US downloads in the Shopping category rising 10% in November vs. last year, but different.
I looked at the most popular shopping apps this November and compared their downloads to last November to see if the bigs continued growing and the answer isn't exactly what I expected.
Let me show you how shopping changed in 2025.
Before we get to the new trend though, let's talk turkey.
I compared downloads of all shopping apps on Black Friday in November because it seems like that's when Black Friday deals have been starting in the last few years.
According to Appfigures Intelligence, downloads in the shopping category rose to 69M in the US in November, a 10% increase from November 2024. Downloads on Google Play grew a bit more than on the App Store (11.5% vs 10.5%), but the App Store drove more than double the downloads.
Actual Black Friday downloads were a bit different. Shopping app downloads from the App Store grew by 8.2% while downloads on Google Play dropped by 2.2% in the US.
Where did these millions of new downloads go?
I analyzed the top 10 shopping apps in the US, which include Temu, Walmart, Shop, Whatnot, Etsy, Amazon Shopping, Best Buy, SHEIN, Target, Bath & Body Works.
Comparing offline retailers and online marketplaces might feel like an apples to oranges comparison, but it really isn't. Any app that offers you a discount to take your money and deliver a good is competing for your attention and your wallet. Both are finite for most.
Can you guess which app grew the most?
No, it's not Temu. Or Etsy. Or even Amazon.
It's... Whatnot.
Yes, the least known app from this entire set saw downloads in the US rise a whopping 541% in November when compared to last year.
At the same time, downloads of Temu, SHEIN, Etsy, and Walmart declined in the US.
Best Buy, Target, and Shop all rose double digits, while Amazon kept up with last year. But it's Amazon so it's okay.
Shopping Goes Social
So, what's Whatnot, the shopping app that our app intelligence shows grew from just 254K downloads in November of 2024 to a massive 1.6M new downloads in the US this year?
Whatnot is a live-streaming shopping platform where sellers broadcast themselves opening trading card packs, showing off collectibles, or auctioning vintage items in real-time. Think QVC meets Twitch. Buyers watch, chat, bid, and buy—all within the app.
It's shopping as entertainment, and it's working.
The platform taps into the same psychology that made unboxing videos massive on YouTube: the thrill of discovery, the fear of missing out, and the social connection of experiencing it together. But instead of just watching, you can actually buy what you're seeing in real-time.
What This Means for Shopping
Whatnot's explosive growth signals a shift in how people want to shop on mobile. Traditional e-commerce feels transactional. Whatnot makes it social and spontaneous.
This isn't just about collectibles. Live shopping has already taken off in China with platforms like Taobao Live, and we're starting to see it gain traction in the West. TikTok Shop is betting heavily on it. Amazon Live exists. Instagram has experimented with it.
The common thread: shopping is becoming less about searching for what you need and more about discovering what you didn't know you wanted through engaging, interactive experiences.
And it's not stopping there!
AI and LLMs like ChatGPT are already starting to reshape shopping in a different direction—personalized shopping assistants that understand your preferences, answer questions, and help you make decisions without the pressure of a live seller.
The future of mobile shopping isn't one thing. It's fragmented: some people will love the high-energy, social experience of live shopping. Others will prefer the quiet efficiency of an AI assistant. Both are growing, and both represent a move away from the static product listings that have dominated e-commerce for the past two decades.
Whatnot's 541% growth is just the beginning.
After years of decline, 2025 marks a dramatic reversal: the App Store is experiencing its biggest wave of new app releases since 2016. The catalyst? A perfect storm of AI-powered development tools, proven monetization models, and viral growth channels that are bringing a new generation of developers into the ecosystem.
According to Appfigures Explorer, Apple's App Store saw 557K new app submissions in 2025, a whopping 24% increase from 2024, and the first meaningful increase since 2016's all-time high of 1M apps.
But this isn't just about quantity... The nature of who's building and why they're building has fundamentally changed.
To understand why this matters, you need to understand what came before. After hitting all-time highs in 2016 with over 1 million new apps, releases began a steady decline. By 2017, submissions dropped to 731K and just a year later the number dropped to just 474K - less than half the peak!
The App Store had matured. Categories became crowded. Discovery got harder. The early land-grab opportunities were gone, and aspiring developers looked at the market and decided the odds weren't in their favor.
Then covid hit.
The pandemic triggered a temporary surge in app development. With people stuck at home, developers had time. With entire industries going digital overnight, they had motivation. Remote work tools, fitness apps, movie streaming, education platforms, and many others suddenly became essential.
Releases jumped to 491K in 2020, but the boost was modest and short-lived. By 2022 the world strated reopening and the momentum dropped sending releases down to 434K, and by 2023 they hit a low of 424K, the lowest point since 2012.
But then things changed. 2024 saw a modest recovery to 448K new apps, and 2025's jump to 557K represents something I believe is entirely different.
So what changed?
1. AI and Vibe Coding Make Development Accessible
LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude, and tools like Cursor and Replit have lowered the technical barriers to app development, so non-technical founders can now "vibe code" their way to functional apps in days, not months.
It doesn't mean these apps are competitive on features or experience, but they are going into the App Store nevertheless.
2. TikTok Proved Viral Growth Is Real
A new generation of apps figured out how to crack TikTok and Instagram as legitimate growth channels. Apps that no one heard of before generated millions of downloads and rose to the top of the App Store seemingly ovenight thanks creator partnerships and UGC that actually converts.
This isn't paid ads. It's organic, viral, performance-driven distribution that's been proven to be reachable for indie developers and small teams.
I'm not saying it's easy, but it's possible.
3. Subscriptions Actually Make Money
With subscriptions, developers aren't just launching apps, they're launching sustainable businesses.
The subscription model, once reserved for giants, has proven it works for most apps, even the indie ones. And even though optimizing subscription revenue at the level of greats like Tinder is still very hard, generating a sustainable income isn't.
You can build an app with AI, get it in front of potential users via ASO and TikTok, convert them into recurring revenue, and have a profitable business within months. That's a formula that didn't work as well five years ago.
What This Means
There's a renesaince in the App Store that's purely based on the potential for success. The 2025 surge isn't a flash in the pan. It's the result of several different opportunities funneling into the App Store, making app development viable for an entirely new class of entrepreneur.
FYI - This analysis focuses specifically on Apple's App Store. Google Play tells a very different story—one I'll dive into in a future article so make sure you're subscribed to the newsletter.
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While most social media platforms chase engagement metrics and struggle with monetization, LinkedIn has quietly become the money-making machine of social media. The professional network is on track to generate more consumer revenue in 9 days than X earns in an entire month.
According to Appfigures Intelligence, 2025 marks a historic year for LinkedIn as it already crossed $1 billion in consumer spend (gross revenue) from its mobile apps for the first time. This represents a massive 35% increase compared to 2024, cementing LinkedIn's position as one of the most effectively monetized social platforms in the world.
But the real story isn't just the total.
Monetization Over Volume
While LinkedIn's download growth has actually slowed, its revenue per download (RpD) tells a completely different story. The company has mastered the art of extracting more value from each user who does install the app.
Here's how LinkedIn's revenue per download has evolved:
That's an 8.7x increase in just five years.
Now, RpD isn't a perfect metric when subscriptions are involved—since many subscribers don't need to reinstall the app every year—but it's directional. What it really shows is that LinkedIn has gotten dramatically better at converting users into paying customers and keeping them subscribed.
What's Driving Growth?
In a crowded job seeker market, LinkedIn Premium has evolved from a nice-to-have into a must-have for professionals in competitive job markets and sales roles, and even for hiring managers sourcing talent. The platform's AI-powered features, enhanced messaging capabilities, and InMail credits provide tangible value that justifies the subscription cost.
LinkedIn sells something that actually works: professional visibility, job search tools, and business development capabilities that deliver measurable ROI for users.
More importantly, this revenue growth shows LinkedIn's users are increasingly on mobile vs other devices, and that makes sense as more engaged social platform users are on mobile.
What's Next?
LinkedIn's revenue growth shows no signs of slowing. As the platform continues refining its premium offerings and the professional networking space becomes increasingly digital-first and mobile-first, expect this growth to continue. With downloads stabilizing but monetization accelerating, LinkedIn has found the sustainable growth formula that eludes most social platforms: focus on value, not vanity metrics.
If current trends hold, LinkedIn could be approaching $1.5 billion in annual consumer revenue by 2026, making it one of the most valuable consumer subscription businesses in the app ecosystem, joining a very small billionaire club where TikTok, YouTube, Tinder, and a few other apps and games hang out.
It's time for my monthly check-in on (https://appfigures.com/reports/app-profile?id=ua_zG5Ecw)[X]'s mobile revenue, and this month I'm looking at how the platform's Black Friday campaign performed.
The short version: It worked! But there's a more interesting story when we look at the trend.
Appfigures Intelligence shows that X's second Black Friday promotion resulted in $24.1M of consumer spending in November. That's slightly higher than the $23.6M X hauled in last November, but not by much.
That's the challenge X is facing: revenue has been consistently higher in 2025 compared to 2024 in absolute terms, but monthly growth has largely stagnated.
Looking at X's monthly gross revenue throughout 2025, there's a clear pattern. After peaking at $26.8M in March, monthly gross revenue has hovered in the $21M-$24M range for most of the year, according to our estimates.
Compare this to the consistent month-over-month growth X saw throughout much of 2024, when estimated consumer spending in the app climbed from $11.3M in January to $25.4M in December.
The Bigger Picture
Year over year, X's revenue has grown a whopping 48%, and if we go back a bit more, mobile revenue is substantially higher than it was in 2023 when the platform generated just $88M for the full year.
Revenue growth has been hard to predict ever since Elon took over for reasons that defy the laws of app revenue, and this year is no different. But... X has changed a lot this year - from bringing on Nikita Bier to manage product to massive algorithm updates and having Grok. All of those are slowly shifting growth away from Elon's behavior to platform performance, and that's good news.
X has proven it can generate meaningful subscription revenue but the real question is whether it can continue to evolve to retain and expand them.
Appfigures has the intelligence you need
While tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Apple dominate the smart home market with closed ecosystems, an open-source alternative is quietly building momentum.
As a big fan of home automation since the X10 days, I've been using and following the rise of Home Assistant, the DIY smart home platform for a long time.
This year, something big happened.
According to Appfigures Intelligence, Home Assistant's mobile app is projected to reach 1.7M downloads in 2025. That growth is particularly notable given the app's more technical nature and the fact that it requires users to set up and maintain their own smart home server.
But what's more important is where the growth is coming from.
Where Growth Is Happening
Germany has been Home Assistant's biggest market for a while, and while Germany remained the app's biggest market with 279K estimated downloads in 2025, the real story is the US!
Our estimates show US downloads of Home Assistant surged 54% in 2025 to 264K, making it Home Assistant's second-largest market and its fastest-growing developed market globally.
The US surge is significant because the US has the highest smart home market penetration globally. Americans already own millions of smart devices, from Ring doorbells and Philips Hue lights, to Nest thermostats and a variety of smart plugs, but those devices are often siloed in separate apps with limited automation capabilities.
Home Assistant solves that by letting users connect everything into a single, locally-controlled system with a powerful automation engine.
The fact that US adoption is accelerating suggests the app is becoming more user-friendly and that mainstream users are getting more comfortable with DIY alternatives to brand-locked/cloud ecosystems.
Why Now?
Two factors are driving Home Assistant's growth:
What This Means
Home Assistant's growth shows that even in categories dominated by tech giants, there's room for open alternatives that prioritize user control. As smart home adoption continues to expand and users accumulate more devices across incompatible ecosystems, the demand for a unified, user-owned solution will only grow.
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