This Week in Apps: App Store privacy labels, Facebook criticizes Apple over ad targeting, Twitter kills Periscope
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in global consumer spend in 2019. Not including third-party Chinese app stores, iOS and Android users downloaded 130 billion apps in 2020. Consumer spend also hit a record $112 billion across iOS and Android alone. In 2019, people spent three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Due to COVID-19, time spent in apps jumped 25% year-over-year on Android.
The full-page from Facebook will run in
the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and
Washington Post with the headline “We’re standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere.” In the ad, Facebook even goes on to say that “these changes will be devasting to small businesses.” It notes that small businesses have shared their concerns with Facebook, with up to 44 percent of businesses increasing their usage of personalized ads during the pandemic to help their business.
Facebook has regularly criticized Apple for its App Store policies. It has also welcomed the new draft laws Digital Markets Act (DMA) from the European Commission that aims to keep tech giants in check.
Facebook, champion of small businesses everywhere. on December 16, 2020, 10:57 24 comments
What just happened? When big tech companies attack each other publicly, they make a lot of noise about it. Just look at Facebook, which has lambasted Apple, again, in a series of full-page newspaper ads, claiming the privacy changes in iOS 14 will damage small businesses that rely on targeted advertising.
The privacy feature set to appear in iOS and iPadOS 14 has already caused concern among Facebook- and Google-backed firms whose ads track users across apps and websites to create detailed profiles and targeted ads. Essentially, the feature requires developers to detail how their apps collect and use data while also requesting users permission.