Mobile News - Happy New Year 2021

Spending on apps across Apple’s App Store and Google Play rose 34.5% at Christmas. That’s nearly double the growth rate of app spending at Christmas last year.

It’s just another sign that people cooped up at home trying to avoid Covid are spending more time on entertainment they can consume. Most of the spending went to mobile games.

Outside that, various entertainment apps including Tiktok did well. The top mobile game was Roblox. That should intensify anticipation for Roblox’s IPO, which the company delayed earlier this month amid an overheated IPO market.

Not that everyone is glued to their phone playing games. As the New York Times reported this week, print book sales rose nearly 8% this year.

Adobe scheduled the end of support for its famous Flash software on December 31st, 2020, and today is the day. While Adobe won’t start blocking Flash content until January 12th, major browsers will shut it all down tomorrow and Microsoft will block it in most versions of Windows. It’s over.

Flash enjoyed huge cultural relevance and looms large in web history, which might be why its funeral procession has lasted for years. Browsers started showing Flash the door early in the last decade, and in 2015 Adobe asked developers to move on to HTML5. Things became official in 2017, when Adobe announced it would end support.

Apple removed 39,000 game apps on its China store Thursday, the biggest removal ever in a single day, as it set year-end as deadline for all game publishers to obtain a licence.

Analysts said the move was no surprise as Apple continues to close loopholes to fall in line with China’s content regulators, and would not directly affect Apple’s bottom line as much as previous removals.

An estimated 554,000 users signed up for the app from Friday to Sunday, including a record 244,000 downloads on Sunday alone, according to the market-research firm Apptopia. While mobile devices are just one entry point for customers using a streaming service, the data provides a way to measure traffic. HBO Max’s total mobile users now stand at just under 12 million, Apptopia said.

Meanwhile, Walt Disney Co.’s Disney+ streaming service had about 2.3 million global installations of its mobile app over the Christmas holiday, a 28% increase from the prior weekend, according to the market-research firm Sensor Tower.

While many office workers are still working from home, others across the world are now beginning to return to their offices in person for the first time in months.

2 out of 3 workers still feel uncomfortable returning to the workplace. Outbreak prevention, worker safety, and employees’ peace of mind will be top concerns for businesses around the world as they begin to reopen their office doors.

This report dives into some of the technologies that will help address these concerns and influence the future of the office space, from autonomous cleaning solutions to people-counting sensors.