iOS 16 Propells Widgets to the Top of the App Store
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #131 - China Takes Over the App Store. Check out the full article for more insights.
iOS 16 launched this week and much like two years ago, when iOS 14 rolled out, one type of app is getting a lot of love (aka. downloads) thanks to a new feature iPhone users can't have enough of.
That feature is, of course, widgets!
iOS 14 introduced widgets to the iPhone and iOS 16 brought them into your lock screen. Android users are laughing at how behind this is, but I'm going to ignore that for now and focus on the downloads.
And, there are a lot of downloads!
Three apps dedicated to creating custom widgets have seen ranks grow with the release of iOS 16 on Tuesday.
Top Widgets, Widgetsmith, and Color Widgets have been downloaded more than a million times on Tuesday alone, according to our estimates.
At least one of those should be familiar to you. Widgetsmith was the most popular choice back in 2020, and it's also one of the go-to solutions this time around. We estimate it saw 225 thousand new downloads on Tuesday, an increase of about 650% from its recent daily average.
But it isn't the most popular option.
Top Widgets, which is one of the many apps that use Chinese in their English names, a trend I started noticing recently, is currently the most downloaded app in the US. We estimate it saw more than 750 thousand new downloads on Tuesday, up a whopping 2,400% from its daily average.
Color Widgets was a distant third in the race, adding 35 thousand new downloads, up 169% from its daily average, according to our estimates.
Lock screen widgets are somewhat basic right now so I'm not sure how long this wave will go on for, but for now, I expect downloads for all three to grow even more until this wave ends.
And, I'm not sure what's going on with Chinese words in English names, but keep reading for a possible explanation.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
