The Key Trends and Opportunities for Apps in 2023 — Lexi Sydow, data.ai

On the podcast we talk with Lexi about data.ai’s State of Mobile report, the countries subscription apps should focus on for growth, and why things still look bright for apps despite a decline in overall spend.

Top Takeaways
🕹️ Mobile app spend is down, but that may not be a bad thing
🤳 Non-gaming apps see additional growth with resilient spend
✍️ The subscription model underpins growth for non-gaming apps
📈 Look to non-U.S. markets for new opportunities
💝 The most successful apps will offer frictionless, personalized experiences

About Lexi Sydow
👨‍💻 Head of Insights at data.ai, a unified data AI company that combines consumer and market data with artificial intelligence to offer insights into trends.
💡 “We’ve gotten to a place where it’s become very native behavior — not just in the app store sense, but even mobile commerce. … It’s those habitual things that we do that reinforce our habits.”
👋  LinkedIn | Twitter

Links & Resources
‣ Get the State of Mobile 2023 report
‣ Work at data.ai (remote and hiring!)

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Episode Highlights
[2:16] History report: From starting as “The Retrospective” to including more forward-thinking pieces, publishing the Annual State of Mobile report has been a decade of fun for data.ai — and a valuable resource for app developers.
[4:54] More reports: Lexi outlines data.ai’s various other reports that help separate real trends from massaged data.
[7:48] An evolutionary thing: Most changes to data.ai’s reports have been organic, largely thanks to a maturation of the industry, analysis, and the team’s understanding.
[11:54] It’s data, it’s AI, it’s data.ai: data.ai’s sophisticated team collects data based on their own products, utilizing AI in the process. This helps them make their own accurate estimates, and they’re proud of that.
[18:39] M.E.T.H.O.D.: Lexi dives into the hows of data collection in the age of privacy, including data.ai’s growing categorization of apps.
[21:53] Marquee landmark year: For the first time ever, spend is down. Lexi details the data and what it tells us.
[28:03] Concentrate: The top three countries for app spend have their own chart in the report. But it’s not all dominated by China, the U.S., and Japan.
[30:21] GDP transformed: While China is three or four times the size of the U.S., China’s spend is only marginally greater than the latter. There’s still a lot of headroom for China to move.
[39:30] Top app categories: In many categories, subscription apps take the top spot. Usually in the top 10, storage subscription app Google One jumped straight to number one in consumer spending this year.
[42:36] What is a phone?: It’s becoming — if it hasn’t already become — native behavior to use phones to do everything. Meaningful personalized experiences convert to subscriptions and in-app purchases.