Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year This week we’re diving into how Apple is defending its App Store fees amid the Epic lawsuit and how it responded to the other complaints raised by Spotify, Match and Tile in the Senate antitrust hearing. We’re also looking at new data that implies Facebook’s grip on social is starting to loosen, TikTok’s new features, tests and plans for e-commerce, security issues with Twitter’s Tip Jar and more. This Week in Apps will soon be a newsletter! Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters Apple talks App Store fraud Apple wants developers to know what they’re paying for with those App Store commissions. The company this week announced it stopped more than… Click below to read the full story from TechCrunch
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This Week in Apps: Apple talks App Store fraud, responds to antitrust complaints; Facebook growth is slipping
