This Week in Apps: Google Fights KakaoTalk, Twitter Deal in Danger, FTC Asked to Investigate TikTok
Welcome to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest news on mobile operating systems, mobile apps, and the overall app economy.
The app industry continues to grow, with record numbers of downloads and consumer spending across iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. According to App Annie, global spending on iOS and Google Play will be $135 billion in 2021, and that figure will likely be higher when its annual report, including third-party app stores in China, is released on next year. Consumers also downloaded 10 billion more apps this year than in 2020, reaching nearly 140 billion new installs, he found.
Apps aren't just a way to pass the idle hours; they are also big business. In 2019, mobile-focused companies had a combined valuation of $544 billion, 6.5 times higher than non-mobile-focused companies. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion of capital into mobile companies, up 27% year-over-year.
This Week in Apps provides a way to keep up with the rapidly changing industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, seed funding, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.
Do you want This Week in Apps to be in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters
Elon says he's killing the Twitter dealThe takeover of the Bird application could be canceled, if Elon Musk has his way.
On Friday, Musk's legal team informed Twitter that Tesla and SpaceX executives would terminate the merger deal because, as their letter alleges, Twitter made false and misleading health claims of his business. This, of course, refers to the drama Musk had sparked over the percentage of bots on the service, which Twitter says is estimated to be less than 5%. Following Musk's earlier push for more information on this figure, Twitter provided Musk's team with API access to make their own decisions. The letter says, however, that this API access was capped and limited, preventing the team from being able to accurately analyze Twitter's bot data. (Which makes Musk's claims that the number of bots are higher than Twitter said a little hard to prove!) Musk's lawyers also allege that Twitter included known fake accounts and accounts of bots in its mDAUs and had no standard process for calculating its mDAUs or percentage of bots. Even if the arguments were valid - and this cannot be determined at this time - they do not allow Musk to simply walk away.
Musk has already legally agreed to this deal, which means the battle will now go to court where Twitter says it plans to enforce the deal at the agreed price and terms. And even if both parties agree to terminate, Musk will have to pay $1 billion in termination fees.
The real reason Musk is trying to shut down probably has nothing to do with 'bots'. It's because he knows he paid too much. What looked like a decent deal earlier (@ $54.20 per share) quickly became an overvalued deal in a macro environment that led to tech stocks falling. Since the deal was announced, Twitter shares had not reached the traded price and, in fact, had recently fallen 28% below Musk's offer price. By forcing the deal to go to court, Musk could hope for a sh...
Welcome to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest news on mobile operating systems, mobile apps, and the overall app economy.
The app industry continues to grow, with record numbers of downloads and consumer spending across iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. According to App Annie, global spending on iOS and Google Play will be $135 billion in 2021, and that figure will likely be higher when its annual report, including third-party app stores in China, is released on next year. Consumers also downloaded 10 billion more apps this year than in 2020, reaching nearly 140 billion new installs, he found.
Apps aren't just a way to pass the idle hours; they are also big business. In 2019, mobile-focused companies had a combined valuation of $544 billion, 6.5 times higher than non-mobile-focused companies. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion of capital into mobile companies, up 27% year-over-year.
This Week in Apps provides a way to keep up with the rapidly changing industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, seed funding, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.
Do you want This Week in Apps to be in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters
Elon says he's killing the Twitter dealThe takeover of the Bird application could be canceled, if Elon Musk has his way.
On Friday, Musk's legal team informed Twitter that Tesla and SpaceX executives would terminate the merger deal because, as their letter alleges, Twitter made false and misleading health claims of his business. This, of course, refers to the drama Musk had sparked over the percentage of bots on the service, which Twitter says is estimated to be less than 5%. Following Musk's earlier push for more information on this figure, Twitter provided Musk's team with API access to make their own decisions. The letter says, however, that this API access was capped and limited, preventing the team from being able to accurately analyze Twitter's bot data. (Which makes Musk's claims that the number of bots are higher than Twitter said a little hard to prove!) Musk's lawyers also allege that Twitter included known fake accounts and accounts of bots in its mDAUs and had no standard process for calculating its mDAUs or percentage of bots. Even if the arguments were valid - and this cannot be determined at this time - they do not allow Musk to simply walk away.
Musk has already legally agreed to this deal, which means the battle will now go to court where Twitter says it plans to enforce the deal at the agreed price and terms. And even if both parties agree to terminate, Musk will have to pay $1 billion in termination fees.
The real reason Musk is trying to shut down probably has nothing to do with 'bots'. It's because he knows he paid too much. What looked like a decent deal earlier (@ $54.20 per share) quickly became an overvalued deal in a macro environment that led to tech stocks falling. Since the deal was announced, Twitter shares had not reached the traded price and, in fact, had recently fallen 28% below Musk's offer price. By forcing the deal to go to court, Musk could hope for a sh...
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