Christmas and New Year celebrations were dim this year. The resurgence of Coronavirus cases along with travel restrictions and new curfews crushed many Americans’ plans to celebrate the holidays in-person with family and friends.
Flurry Blog
December is by far the highest month for new device activations in the United States. Elevated device activations begin around Black Friday, peak on Christmas Day and remain elevated through New Year’s Day. Combined, this forms an extended, appreciable wave of new smartphone activations across the month. In this report, we share how December 2020 smartphone activations fared against the backdrop of slumping retail sales during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.
Christmas day in the United States is the single greatest day for new smartphone activations. And despite supply chain delays caused by COVID-19, Apple launched its iPhone 12 line—complete with four 5G-enabled devices—just in time for the holidays.
2020 has surfaced the importance that technology plays in society. Since the beginning of the pandemic, digital technology has enabled people to work remotely, attend classes, play social games, shop, leverage virtual assistants, and more. All told, the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation by several years and will endure long after the pandemic is over.
App developers must find new opportunities to delight app users while also increasing an app’s profitability. And on top of creating an engaging user experience, driving user acquisition, or finding new ways to monetize, the ability to quickly resolve crash incidents is essential for sustaining a positive user experience.
While 2020 will mostly be remembered for COVID-19, it was also a year of tremendous resilience. Teachers and schools around the world transitioned from in-class learning to full-time distance learning in a matter of weeks. Workers created home offices and took to meeting on Zoom instead of in conference rooms. People found ways to exercise outside of the gym with apps and peripherals like Peloton. And the mobile industry is poised for meaningful transformation in 2021.
The holiday season in the U.S. between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a critical sales period for smartphone manufacturers. From 2016 to 2018, the last three years Apple disclosed unit sales, the company sold well over one-third of its iPhones during the last quarter of each year. And while the stakes are just as high this year, the pandemic has strongly impacted the economy. COVID-19 has left many unemployed, reduced retail foot traffic, and forced Americans to simply stay home, leaving retailers scrambling to prepare for a largely digital December.
Apple is changing the information required to submit new apps and app updates to the app store effective December 8, 2020. The new submission process will give users transparency about app data usage via a new privacy details section of an app’s product page in the app store. This “nutrition label” will also include data used by third-party partners integrated into an app.
Black Friday is a crucial event for retailers, kicking off the holiday shopping season. According to a recent Google report, however, the pandemic has reduced U.S. retail foot traffic by 20% since May. Additionally, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that growth in consumer spending has been slowing each month since July. These trends paint a grim outlook for battered retailers who were hoping for a strong Black Friday rebound. In this report, we examine how COVID-19 impacted both mobile and in-store Black Friday shopping.
2020 has been a tumultuous year. A global pandemic claimed the lives of nearly 1.5 million people, a worldwide movement emerged for racial justice, and American political division created widespread concern. With COVID-19 forcing unprecedented social distancing, the mobile app economy has also experienced radical shifts. App consumption has exploded, Gen Z is gaming more than ever, and mobile news consumption dwarfed that of 2019. And Apple’s announcements of impending data policy rule changes have upended an ecosystem.
On October 13, 2020, in a highly anticipated launch event, Apple introduced its newest iPhone models, the iPhone 12 series. For the first time ever, Apple launched four devices that differ by size, price and features, including the first ever iPhone 12 mini at 5.4 inches. The devices launched in two waves: the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro on October 23, and the iPhone 12 mini and 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro Max on November 13. This report evaluates the success of Apple’s iPhone 12 series launch this year.
Earlier this month, more than one billion people in India as well as expatriates across the world celebrated the festival of Diwali. Best known as the Festival of Lights, Diwali is marked by family gatherings, fireworks and prayer, and is one of the most widely celebrated festivals in India. Over the years, the weeks leading up to Diwali have become the most important holiday shopping season in the country with people splurging on gadgets, clothes, appliances, jewelry, and more.
Our primary goal at Flurry is to help app developers build better apps for mobile users around the world. And we know firsthand how crashes and errors can negatively impact the user experience. To help our customers manage and respond to crashes, errors, and exceptions, we are pleased to announce a set of upgrades to our current Flurry Crash offering for iOS and Android apps. Using Flurry Crash doesn’t require a separate SDK; it’s built into our lightweight Analytics SDK that can be integrated in about 5 minutes.
The spread of Coronavirus in the U.S. has not only threatened the economy, but also the American educational system. After the summer break, all but four states implemented either hybrid or remote learning models. With some parents working or taking care of siblings, among other factors, would students engage academically? In this report, Flurry measures academic engagement by looking at one of the most common activities that directly competes with classroom and study time —playing mobile games on smartphones.
While 2020 has featured some of the biggest events in modern history —a global pandemic, an impeached U.S. President, widespread protests over severe social injustice, and a wildly volatile economy— 83% of Americans believe that who wins the presidency, according to Pew Research, matters more now than it has over the past two decades. In this report, we look at the massive spike in news consumption driven by this year’s U.S. Presidential election.