Learn how COVID-19 affected the user behavior and the category rankings of apps.

1. Coronavirus Impact
on the App Industry
Intelligence & Insights provided by MobileAction
Mustafa Buyukkara
Head of Product
at MobileAction
Fouad Saeidi
CEO
at App Growth Network

2. Speakers
Mustafa Buyukkara
Head of Product
at MobileAction
Fouad Saeidi
CEO
at App Growth Network
● 7+ years in mobile growth
● 250+ Apps Touched in 50+ Geos
● 2+ years in Data Science
● Helping 300+ App Companies with
their everyday decisions
Our ProjectsOur Partners

3. Agenda
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
Global Impact of COVID-19
Impact on the App Industry
Travel
Medical
Food & Drink
Education
Social Networking
Business
Games & Entertainment
Aftermath of COVID-19
Section 7
Section 8
Section 9
Section 10

4. Section 1 Global Impact of COVID-19

5. Brief Timeline of Outbreak
Dec 2019
China only
Jan 2020
+ Hong Kong,
Japan, South
Korea,
Taiwan,
Thailand
Feb 2020 Mar 2020
v
April 2020
+ Iran, Italy,
Spain, UK,
Russia...
+ EU,
Turkey,
Mongolia,
Panama...
+ Global

6. Global Impacts : Graphic One App Projections
From a macro perspective (esports,
events, etc) but for home entertainment
these stats are different

7. Section 2 Impact on the App Industry

8. • Popularity score of the keyword “coronavirus” increased from 26 to 65 in 2 months.
• 41 apps are ranking for it with the majority coming from Health & Fitness for Appstore
• Google Play Store banned these keywords and redirecting to WHO
Keyword Trends for “Coronavirus” Keyword

9. Coronavirus Impact on the App Industry
• Major change of lifestyle steering people to turn to some apps more than others
• Biggest Seasonality of all times for the App Industry
We’ll take a look at apps in 7 key categories:
Travel Medical Food
& Drink
Social
Networking
Business Education
And analyze how they’ve been affected by the coronavirus outbreak starting from the New Year (when
the virus became known to the public) up to now.
Games

10. Section 3 Travel Category

11. How Travel Apps Got Affected
• Tourism and travel have been affected negatively
• Let’s take a more in-depth look into two apps in the
travel category to see more detailed insights
Uber Air China

12. Uber
• Uber, one of the biggest in the
market, was affected by the
consistent spread of the
coronavirus
• Uber was preserving its overall
rank despite the news about the
outbreak.
• On March 13, President Trump
declared a national emergency.
Starting March 14th, overall rank
dropped to as low as 343th
national
emergency

13. Air China
• Air China’s graphics in China shows a
clear drop in the ranking
• After January 29th, the drop has almost
doubled
COVID-19 news about China in January:
• JAN.11 China reports its first death from
coronavirus
• JAN. 23 The Chinese authorities closed off
Wuhan and suspended travel
• JAN. 31 The Trump Administration restricted
travel from China

14. Section 4 Medical Category

15. Rise of Medical Apps: Babylon

16. Babylon Global

17. Section 5 Food & Drink Category

18. Food & Drink and Shopping Apps
• Almost all restaurants and coffee shops were
forced to shut down their regular service
• Many moved to either carry-out or delivery
through 3rd parties
• The rankings of apps offering delivery services
surged
Starbucks Instacart Walmart

19. Starbucks
• Starbucks, in the US, started being affected negatively by the virus in March. Rankings
dropped from 25th to 229th in 10 days. (March 7 marking 100.000 cases worldwide)
People have different priorities
in their everyday lives because
of growing outbreak

20. Instacart
• Grocery delivery and pick-up
service is ranking up from 563rd
to 66 in overall and 18th to 2nd
in shopping
Users are turning to delivery
apps more to socially distance
themselves

21. Walmart
• In March, there’s an increase in both the shopping and overall
ranking categories in the US.
Walmart’s shopping
category ranking
jumped from 27th to
3rd in 12 days

22. Ritual vs. Skip the Dishes
• Ritual is a popular app for food pick-up service in Canada and seems to be slowly
declining (drop from 333 to 355 in USA) as people are more likely to cook at home.
• Skip the Dishes is experiencing the same patterns, but increased in overall ratings by 22 positions,
likely due to its food delivery offering.

23. Section 6 Education Category

24. How Education Apps Got Affected
• People stay home to self-quarantine but
keeping education going is a top priority
• Google Classroom is now the top app in the
education category
• App has made a jump from #314 to #5 overall
in the past 10 days alone (from #783 to #5
since New Year)
• Some schools announced they were closing in
the first half of March by local decision of the
states and as of March 19th, 41 states decided
to close schools

25. Google Classroom
• Here’s South Korea, another
country that was hit hard by the
virus very early on
• We see an even sharper rise in
the numbers for Google
Classroom in Korea, as schools
have been closed since the last
week of February

26. Google Classroom
• In Europe, we see a sharp rise for Italy
• Rankings skyrocketed after the 23rd of February, becoming # 1 in the education (and # 3 overall)
Italy had its first case
on February 20th.

27. Ding Talk
• Chinese education app, that a lot of
schools opted in to using, came under fire
from students who didn’t want to do their
homework
• Students managed to spam enough 1-
star reviews to get a 4.9 rating to go
down to 2.0 in a matter of days, getting
it removed from the app store
• But the app was quickly back on the app
store with a better ranking

28. LingoKids
● Rankings of Lingokids jumped on March 14th, right after national emergency
was declared in the US.

29. Section 7 Social Networking Category

30. On the rise: Houseparty
Houseparty
• Houseparty: Snapchat like video-call & social networking app
• Italy went into nationwide quarantine in March 9th.
• Houseparty’s ranking spiked in Italy starting March 13th, jumping from 1,492nd overall to 1st in
both social networking and overall.

31. Visibility Analysis of Houseparty & Skype
The map taken from MobileAction’s Visibility Report feature
• Houseparty has become more visible in Spain since March 18th.
MARCH 17 - The E.U. bars most
travelers from outside the bloc
for 30 days.

32. Visibility Analysis of Houseparty & Skype
• Houseparty and Skype are 1st and 2nd in Italy’s Social Networking Top Charts as of March
24th.
The map taken from MobileAction’s Visibility Report feature

33. Family Tracking
• Life360 is losing its visibility in the store since all the children are staying at home.

34. DAU’s in US
Dating
● Social distancing means more people stay home and have no intention of
meeting new people
● Dating apps mitigate this by
encouraging messaging,
maintaining relationships
and making some features
free to retain users, like
Bumble Community Grants

35. Section 8 Business Category

36. How Business Networking Apps Got Affected
• A lot of businesses have been switching to remote to ensure their employees’ safety
• Rise in apps that support working from home like Zoom continue trending in both the App Store
and Google Trends

37. Zoom
• Zoom continued rising after Feb 23rd on the App Store, which is when coronavirus
made its way to Italy
● While it ranked 869th
in the overall and 12th
in the business
category, it became # 1
in business and # 2 in
overall on March 17th.

38. Global Impacts : Online work
• Zoom and Slack are in the top 10, as work and education move online
across countries
Top Free Apps Business US

39. Slack - Italy
Slack - US
● 100% growth in Slack
daily downloads in both
US & Italy in 3 weeks
Remote Work - Slack

40. Remote Work - Asana
● Significant download growth in Spain
Asana - Spain

41. Remote Work - Wavely
● The number of new job seekers has significantly increased due to the COVID19 layoffs, leading to
an increased demand for job search apps.
● Despite the low hiring rate, apps like Wavely, that allow chatting with hiring managers online, are
slowly growing in popularity.

42. Cisco Webex Meeting
• Cisco Webex Daily Active Users

43. Section 9 Games & Entertainment

44. ● No significant trend drivers - games that already had
big user base have a good increase in daily active
users, showing possibility to increase revenue
● Top-grossing games are still Battle Royale and classic
casual games
● Corona-themed games are banned, but infection
spreading-themed games see an uptick (exception
China)
● This is a great opportunity to test engagement
strategies, provide offerings to users and make sure
users are retained
Games

45. China – Gaming Search Trends
China (Surge in Gaming)
• % of active users daily for Mahjong and Game For Peace
(by Tencent), increased 109% and 44%, respectively,
between January and February.
• Other games by Tencent such as Honor of Kings, Happy
Poker, and QQ Speed also saw a 20% surge in their usage
in the two-month period.
• Daily active users of Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow (by
Netease) has more than doubled in China since December.

46. • Overall entertainment apps’ downloads don’t show any particular trend
• But some key players like Netflix show an increased user base
• This also comes with concerns over streaming too much data, reports that EU cellular network is being
strained, YouTube reports similar problem → do we need more infrastructure? 5G?
Quarantine time
downloads
peaked higher
than Christmas
rate
Entertainment

47. News Break Downloads March 2020
https://quicknews.ai/pandemic.html
News Apps
• News apps are in high demand
• CNN saw a sharp 2000% increase in daily downloads in mid-March
• Even smaller, less-known apps like News Break or Quick News - that provide a
more personalized news feed - felt a bump

48. Section 10 Aftermath of COVID-19)

49. Overall Analysis
• Our analysis shows that apps in certain
categories have been losing their
popularity as expected, such as travel.
• People are likely to spend more time on
games, on-demand TV apps, social
networking, and video call apps.
• As Gyms are closed in countries, there might
be a rise in categories such as health,
fitness & medical as there is in education
and business right now.

50. Outcomes
• WFH trend is being adapted faster in many
countries.
• Technology adoption has become easier
and faster for seniors.
• Emissions from planet heating gas has
fallen significantly.
• A lot more time for us to think and reflect
about the life.

51. Giveaways
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52. Thank you!
Intelligence & Insights provided by MobileAction
Mustafa Buyukkara
Head of Product
at MobileAction
Fouad Saeidi
CEO
at App Growth Network
Coronavirus Impact
on the App Industry