This Week in Apps will soon be a newsletter! Sign up here: /newsletters Top Stories Spotify launches its Clubhouse competitor Also, Amazon is reducing its Appstore fees, after similar moves by Apple and Google. and Spotify’s launch of its Greenroom app for live discussions across an array of topics. This week we’re looking at more Clubhouse competitors, including Facebook’s first test of its Live Audio Rooms in the U.S. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies - a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.Īpps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours - they’re also a big business. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.

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.

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