This Week in Apps: Sneak peek at TikTok shopping, new iOS and Android betas, kids’ app Prodigy hit with FTC complaint
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 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.
Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.
February 17, 2021 |
The Brief
The Brief: Soil-carbon markets, edtech startups, reduce and recycle, expanding EV charging, Goldman’s sustainability bond, pay for success
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Farmers harvest ‘soil carbon’ to meet rising corporate demand for emission offsets. Candidates in last year’s U.S. Senate race in Iowa were asked in a televised debate to cite the clearing price for bushels of corn and soybeans (Sen.
Joni Ernstmuffed her answer). In the next election, they may well be asked the going price for a ton of carbon. Farmers in Iowa are getting up to $20 a ton for carbon they sequester in their soil with cover crops, no-till and other sustainable-agriculture techniques, and can fetch additional payments for water-quality credits. That can mean payments to farmers of up to $50 an acre. More than 1,