This Week in Apps - Remember Tumblr?

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.

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U.S. Revenue Index (vs. 30 days ago)

Announcement

I'm in San Francisco next week to open up the App Promotion Summit. If you're around make sure to come by and say hi. I'll be around all day.

In This Roundup

• McDonald's and Wendy's Went Head to Head on National Cheeseburger Day
• The AI Study Helper that's Riding the Back to School Wave
• Honor of Kings Retakes the Throne - The Highest Earning Games in the World
• Offline Games are Still Connecting with Players - The Most Downloaded Games in the World
• Is Tumblr Still a Relevant Social Network?

Insights

1. McDonald's and Wendy's Went Head to Head on National Cheeseburger Day

National Cheeseburger Day happened last Wednesday. I didn't know this was a thing, but apparently it is.

The big three - McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's - knew, and each crafted a promotion that'll allow them to turn the celebration into downloads.

It worked for some more than others...

We analyzed the downloads generated by each of the three apps on Wednesday (9/18) in the US across the App Store and Google Play, and compared them to the app's daily average over the last month. The results were more interesting than I expected.

When it comes to growth, it's Wendy's that came up on top with downloads growing more than both rivals combined!

Our App Intelligence shows McDonald's came in last with 317% growth, Burger King second with 375%, and Wendy's at the top with a whopping 745% increase over the previous 30-day average.

Wendy's offered a Jr. bacon cheeseburger (the little one) for just a penny as long as you buy other stuff, and is running this campaign for an entire week in the hope of getting even more downloads. But so far it looks like the spike in downloads has subsided.

In fact, in the US App Store, Wendy's is ranked 35th overall currently. Higher than its average, but muuuch lower than rival McDonalds, the app with the most new downloads on Wednesday and also the #1 app on Google Play and #5 in the App Store in the US right now.

When we compare absolute downloads, and not growth, our best and worst performers swap.

According to our estimates, McDonald's saw 227K downloads on Wednesday, the most of the three, while Wendy's saw just 87.5K. Wendy's sees much lower daily downloads normally which is why the growth was so much higher.

Burger King saw 139K downloads, according to our estimates, and given it's the middle result in both of our ranks, it's fair to say it really needs a better strategy because this one just isn't working...

Being on-device, in the food & beverage category, gives McDonald's and Wendy's the ability to initiate demand in a way regular ads simply can't, which is why so many of them craft clever campaigns that trade food for downloads.

National Fried Chicken Day takes place in early November. Let's see how these figures will change and if the king can come up with a better strategy.

2. The AI Study Helper That's Riding the Back-to-School Wave

There's a set of apps that rise at the end of August and the beginning of September - back to school season - adding millions of new downloads (and dollars) for their developers. ClassDojo is one of those.

This year, however, there's another set of apps that's in demand - AI study apps (aka. homework busters). Gauth is the most downloaded right now.

Gauth is currently the 3rd most downloaded app in the US App Store, above TikTok, Gmail, Whatsapp, and other household names. It's also ranked 8th on Google Play above Facebook.

Using the app, a student captures a picture of a math problem and Gauth's AI solves it. The service also offers live tutors for more complex problems, or for deeper help with math problems.

Why even pretend to learn math if you're just going to use AI to solve all your problems? That philosophical question isn't very relevant because our App Intelligence shows Gauth was downloaded 1.5M times last week.

That's 147 downloads every second - 10K downloads by the time you finish reading this insight.

It's important to note that last week was Gauth's biggest week of downloads since it was released back in 2020 and had a great few months of downloads back in 2021 that came close, but weren't as high as last week's downloads.

Gauth's rise started at the beginning of June but has been very strong for much of 2024 when compared to 2023.

Google Play leads in downloads where the Philippines, Indonesia, and Brazil are the top markets. A very different list compared to the App Store's, which has the US, UK, and Vietnam at the top.

I can totally see why students would want a companion, but I also attribute Gauth's success to its strong Apple Search Ads campaign. Our Search Ads insights show 1,700 unique keywords in the US alone, most of which are very popular and Gauth commands the highest share of impressions.

What About Revenue?

All those downloads also led to revenue.

According to our estimates, Gauth brought in $2.3M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play since the beginning of the year, $200K of which in August. Less than a third of what its closest competitor, Mathway, brought in at the same time ($772K), so there's a lot more room to grow.

AI will find its way into more day-to-day experiences. If you're in this space or want to get into it keep an eye out for our upcoming market report on AI.

3. Honor of Kings Retakes the Throne - The Highest Earning Games in the World

We dove into the numbers and, as we expected when we looked at July’s results, global net revenue of the top 10 earning titles is hovering ever-so-close to $1B.

Let's take a look at what happened last month in more detail.

On both the iOS and combined ranking, we saw 王者荣耀 (Honor of Kings), the most lucrative mobile game of all time, returned to its throne atop the list. Just on iOS, the megahit amassed an estimated $142M, which was $20M greater than July’s total of $123M. That means players in China spent about 15% more in the game last month than the one before. This is happening as Tencent is once again attempting to take the game global.

After two months at the top on iOS and overall, 地下城与勇士 (DNF Mobile), or Dungeon Fight Mobile, dropped down a spot to #2 in terms of player spending. The $123M it brought in — again, solely from iOS in China — was approximately $20M below its July earnings of $143M net to its developer. So, it got bumped down a rung but only saw 14% less revenue month-over-month.

The rest of the top five earning games remained unchanged over July. #3 game Monopoly Go! added a few millions to its massive stack of very real money, while #4 Royal Match took in $5M more than the previous month. At #5, Roblox saw its revenue remain flat MoM at a net $94M.

All told, our App Intelligence shows the makers of the top 10 earning titles overall received approximately $900M in net revenue after Apple and Google’s fees. That's a small but positive increase from July and is yet another new record high for the global top earning games.

With August in the books, we’re about to see if Q4 2024 can top 2023, and continue to — for the top games — turn around from multiple consecutive quarters of decline.

4. Offline Games are Still Connecting with Players - The Most Downloaded Games in the World

Your eyes aren't deceiving you — the results have been tallied and August's top downloaded games have been carried over from July (with some minor movement on the overall list).

Let's see what we can gather from the shuffling that did happen.

First though, there’s what definitely hasn’t moved, and that’s Offline Games from its #1 overall spot. This collection of simple games and time wasters that are playable even in areas with poor or no internet service.

As the ranking shows, the game is most popular on Google Play, which in turn has a larger user base than iOS in regions where that's more common, including India - the games biggest market. Its 23M total estimated downloads were enough to keep it on top of the ranking, but were 6M less than July.

Subway Surfers stayed in its lane and ranked #2 again last month, generating 22M estimated new downloads just as in July. Another month with Subway Srufers not at the top of the list - this is strange!

Roblox stayed put at #3 with a similar total to the previous month with approximately 17M installs.

The final two games in the overall top five moved up from July to be here. Block Blast climbed two positions from #6 to #4. Free Fire also moved up two from #7 to #5. The latter once again added about 1M more downloads in August than its MAX version, which is intended for more powerful mobile devices.

According to our estimates, August saw overall game downloads decline by 20M globally, 12% below July's total of 167M. Summer is coming to a close and that means a sizable segment of the mobile player base heads back to class and home from vacations, and so the relatively small decline is largely seasonal.

5. Is Tumblr Still a Relevant Social Network?

I read that when X got banned in Brazil, some turned to Tumblr, causing its usage to go up by 350%, and that made me think - do people still use Tumblr?

In case you're not familiar with Tumblr, it's a microblogging platform that launched in 2007 and was very hot for a few years, but lost most of its popularity (and valuation) after getting sold to Yahoo! in 2013.

Automattic, the company that makes WordPress, bought it in 2019 and kept it alive, aaaaaaand is earning revenue from the app - a great proxy for engagement and demand.

So, is Tumblr making any money on the App Store and Google Play?

Yes. It is! But not enough to compete with any real social media platform.

According to our estimates, the now niche platform earned just $97K in August from the App Store and Google Play. And that's net revenue which means what's left after Apple and Google take their cut.

X earns that much in about seven hours. Snapchat earns the same in about two.

Looking at the trend, it seems that revenue isn't growing but rather slowing down. Our estimates show Tumblr was earning more per month, as much as 152K in November of 2023 - its peak.

I looked at what Tumblr is selling, which includes a combination of premium features, a way to boost visibility, and badges - a great collection that should be earning much more, leading me to believe Tumblr doesn't have as many engaged users. Answering my own question, it's pretty obvious that people still use Tumblr, just not many.

Looking at the micro blogs Tumblr generates, it's pretty obvious why. The platform simply hasn't evolved since its good days. It's now fairly antiquated and not competitive with other modern solutions, and badges won't help fix that.

If Tumblr wants to make a comeback it has to reinvent itself, or at least, redesign itself. Engagement and revenue will follow. But I don't expect that will happen. We've seen a trend where once beloved but somewhat abandoned apps get bought and squeezed for in-app purchases in the last few years, and the results are rarely positive. I hope Tumblr beats the odds.

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.

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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.