This Week in Apps #41: Look at All That Money 😱

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 91.67, Google Play 84.16

📈 The rally is over as downloads slowed down considerably after the rush we saw in the last few weeks. That's only until Christmas and New-Year's downloads hit.

FYI - We updated the Mobile Download Index with new categories, including many game sub-categories, this week. Check it out →

---

1. Discord's hefty haul

When it comes to chatting, we usually talk about Slack and Microsoft Teams, but if you're a gamer, there's really only one option—Discord.

The gamer-focused chat app raised a hefty H round last week, which puts its value at $3.5B. How did it get there? Between good organic growth, lots of people staying at home, and games like Among Us! becoming massively popular, Discord has grown a lot in 2020.

In the U.S, Discord's largest market, YoY revenue grew by a multiple of seven since the beginning of 2020, based on our estimates. Discord will end 2020 with more than $26M in gross revenue from the U.S., up from $3.4M in 2019.

2. Gunning for Tinder?

Bumble, the dating app that took swiping to the next level, is planning to IPO soon.

Why? Because it's got the numbers to back it up. Since 2018, Bumble's revenue grew steadily, and as a result of everyone dating from home, U.S. revenue rose to over $15.2M in November. Year over year, Bumble's U.S revenue grew by more than 42%, according to our estimates.

3. Let's talk

Telegram has become the go-to communication app for many social activists in 2020. This week, the platform announced they'll be adding voice calling capabilities in addition to text, which is pretty significant given its massive scale.

In 2020, downloads more than tripled, adding more than 372 million new users worldwide, most of which are on Android and not in the U.S.

The service also expressed interest in beginning to monetize in 2021. We'll be keeping an eye on that effort.

4. Google's enormous reach

I looked at our Top SDK charts this week and noticed that Google has a pretty deep reach. All top 5 most used SDKs in Android apps and games and two of the top 5 on iOS belong to Google.

Firebase, Google's back-end and analytics service, and AdMob, Google's monetization platform, are used by 1.9 million Android and iOS apps. For context, that's 76% of all 2.5 million apps we analyze.

👉 See the most installed SDKs in iOS and Android apps for free

5. HBO Max's big bet

Wonder Woman 1984 is coming out in just a few hours, and for the first time, it'll be coming out in theatres and on HBO Max's streaming service at the same time. And, unlike Disney+, HBO won't be charging subscribers anything extra for the early access. I'm pretty excited about this!

This is a big bet for HBO, which rebranded its steaming offering NOW into Max a few months ago, with fairly obvious success. However, HBO Max, massive catalog and all, is still the underdog of streaming.

Will Wonder Woman be the answer?

App Intelligence for Everyone!

The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

Are you a Journalist? You can get access to our app and market intelligence for free through the Appfigures for Journalists program. Contact us for more details.

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.