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This week at Apptopia
Hey there,
Happy Friday 😎
In a shocking turn of events, Adam is on another thrilling scuba diving trip in some faraway land. We heard it's sunny and warm there, and he may or may not see sharks.
Back to the important stuff—you can (and most definitely should) grab a copy of our latest retail report here.
If you missed last week's action packed newsletter, you can check that out here.
- The Elusive Eve Whiter
Business
Mobile Signal
Chegg (CHGG) is scheduled to report earnings on 2/7. DAUs of its mobile app bounced back to +37% growth QoQ in 4Q21 after falling -24% QoQ in 3Q21. Dive deeper into CHGG with a free trial of our Bloomberg Terminal app.
App Acquisitions
Withings acquired 8fit, makers of a workout/meal planning app, to complement its lineup of health hardware products. 8fit's mobile app was a huge COVID beneficiary and has been downloaded over 3.5m times since January 2020.
Sony is acquiring Bungie, creator of Halo and Destiny, as it tries to keep up with the raft of M&A in the gaming space. Bungie's Destiny 2 Companion app has been downloaded over 500,000 times over the past year.
MUSINGS
It's a bird... it's a plane... it's a super app!
On November 3, 2021, Klarna launched its super app, which incorporated shopping, one-click payment, payment management, price drop notifications, delivery options and returns all in one place. As you can see in the chart below, Klarna app downloads took off after its launch, with Klarna receiving 63% of all BNPL app downloads in December. Affirm, not to be outdone, decided to launch their own super app at the end of January. However, Affirm has positioned their super app around managing finances, where as Klarna's positioning focused on simplifying the shopping experience. Also, Klarna's launch was perfectly timed for the Christmas shopping season, while Affirm's launch was closer to... Groundhog's Day. It will be a challenge for Affirm to match the super performance that Klarna's app put up to close 2021.
Spotify users speak, while the company held silence
Typically the top 10 keywords in Spotify's app reviews include complaints like "ads", "subscription", "playlist", etc. But since the letter Neil Young wrote to the company on January 25 and the media storm that followed, Spotify users took to the reviews to talk to the company. Who by the way, wasn't talking. On Tuesday January 31st, we noticed the top 10 keywords were entirely concentrated on the controversy. The chart below shows the 4 with the most volume from the 25th until February 1, the day before their earnings, when CEO Daniel Ek was forced to address the topic live. Other top words not graphed included "Covid", "vaccine", "free speech", and "censorship". Reviews with these keywords were overwhelmingly of negative sentiment, according to our review intelligence. As of yesterday, the conversation looks to have fizzled out, at least via app reviews.
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App rank, also known as store rank, is both the most cited and most misunderstood mobile app metric out there today. We're here to break it down for you.
Zynga is a powerhouse mobile games publisher, but it's also an increasingly big player in mobile advertising.
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Adam and Madeline discuss the latest news in tech and mobile followed up with a little earnings preview for Netflix and Peloton. This episode has its first ever guest in Chris Radtke of Braze. He discusses their latest guide on reaching your customers in the moments that matter. After that the crew reviews the latest Apptopia insight on Facebook Games and more, followed by our own game of In or Out. Here's the rundown:
Introduction [2:08] Mobile News Review [10:43] I know what you did last quarter [15:38] Discussion w/Chris Radtke of Braze [41:27] This week on Apptopia [46:51] In or Out
