Ep. 96 How Covid Affected Mobile Habits Globally

The way analysts predicted mobile user behavior would change over two to three years happened in 12 months during the Covid pandemic. Today’s guest shares her insight into how Covid affected mobile app user behavior across industry categories around the world--from the surprising use of dating apps to what’s changed with mobile gaming.

Lexi Sydow is the Head of Insights for App Annie, a leading platform for app analytics and app market data. She is based in Melbourne, Australia.

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• What’s the tech scene like in Australia?
• In your opinion, what do you think makes App Annie stand apart from other data analytics companies?
• How did the pandemic affect mobile habits?
• What was surprising or interesting to you about mobile habits during Covid, something you didn’t expect?
• What does gaming usage look like now that parts of the world are re-emerging after Covid?
• Have you seen any changes in mobile user behavior that might be correlated to the current news on the Delta variant?

• 4:47 Australia’s tech scene
• 9:42 Lexi’s background
• 12:10 What sets App Annie apart (psst… they’re hiring!)
• 17:32 How the pandemic affected mobile habits
• 20:31 Dating app user behavior during Covid
• 23:37 Mobile gaming user behavior during Covid
• 25:32 The rise of in-app subscriptions
• 25:52 What apps counter-balanced the dip in travel apps
• 28:25 A deeper dive on mobile gaming users and behavior now
• 33:50 Is the Delta variant affecting mobile user behavior?

(10:50-11:00) “I think with mobile what’s cool is that basically you start to see how the macroeconomy is shifting. Your early indicators are in mobile, so you can see a lot of trends coming up.”

(18:57-19:12) “One of the biggest takeaways for me was Covid, at the macro app level, didn’t change anything in terms of how much we rely on mobile and use it. If anything it was sort of the catalyst that pushed our habits further.”

(25:36-25:44) “We saw $34 billion dollars in Q2 spent on in-app purchases and in-app subscriptions globally across iOS and Google Play.”