Product Management Confabulation
What Product Managers are talking about.
Starbucks is testing a new way for customers to pay for their favorite beverages — without even having to pull out their phone. The company confirmed an internal test of “scanless pay,” a new contactless checkout method that would leverage a Starbucks app’s user’s current geolocation to identify them in the drive-through lane so they wouldn’t have to pull out their phone to pay.
The experience is currently only being tested as a proof-of-concept with Starbucks employees, the company told TechCrunch. It doesn’t have a set date as to when such a feature would launch to consumers, or even if it will.
If it did, however, such an innovation would likely speed up drive-through times, as customers wouldn’t have to launch the Starbucks app, display their barcode, and then wait for the employee to scan their screen — something that can often be tricky in bright sunlight or when the customer isn’t well-positioned at the drive-through window. Instead, a scanless checkout system would allow the employee to simply hand over the customer’s order and have them then be on their way.
This could also potentially impact the company’s bottom line as the drive-through could serve more customers in a shorter amount of time.
The new technology was discovered by developer and researcher Steve Moser, who found references to scanless pay in the current version of the Starbucks mobile app. Additional text in the app explained “Scanless pay in the drive-through helps you get your order fast. We use your device’s location services to identify you when you arrive so you don’t have to pull out your wallet or device when paying at the drive-through.”
The app indicated the feature was available in select locations, but the company told us it’s not open to consumers at this time.
Currently, the system works by asking the user to opt into the feature. Once enabled, customers would check in on the mobile app when they arrive at a participating drive-through store, then tell the barista their name and that they’ve checked in, after placing their order. While this system doesn’t mean you can leave your phone at home, customers likely have enough time to fiddle with this extra step while waiting in the drive-through line. Then, when they approach the window, there isn’t anything else to do but accept your order and move on.
The development is interesting to note because of Starbucks’ leadership in novel payment solutions. Well before Apple Pay became as ubiquitous as it is today, Starbucks was pioneering the concept of the digital wallet at checkout. Today, its Mobile Order & Pay system for ordering ahead plays a significant role in generating company revenue. In Q2 2023, for example, the company noted that combined with drive-through and delivery, Mobile Order & Pay accounted for 74% of U.S. company-owned revenue, in fact.
“As we continue to innovate and invest in the Starbucks Experience for our partners (employees) and customers, we are always testing and exploring new features to ensure an effortless, delightful, and personalized experience for our customers and partners,” a Starbucks spokesperson said, confirming the test to TechCrunch.
Starbucks isn’t the only retail to test out scanless payment tech, of course. Amazon has been developing its own Just Walk Out technology that uses camera systems, an app, and machine learning tech to determine what a customer bought at a store so they could just leave when shopping is complete. The retailer has also been developing a palm-scanning system, Amazon One, used by various venues and retailers, including Panera Bread. The downside of Amazon’s systems is that customers aren’t comfortable with the biometrics involved — having their palm scanned to track them, that is. Starbucks’ scanless system, on the other hand, wouldn’t be much different from grocery pickup apps like Instacart or even Starbucks mobile ordering, where you temporarily provide location access so the store knows you’re on your way.
After a slowing of the app economy that saw consumer spending drop for the first time in 2022, things are starting to look up. According to a new report on in-app spending for the first half of 2023 from app intelligence provider data.ai, there’s once again positive growth in mobile consumer spending. The firm reports global in-app spending has rebounded with 5.3% year-over-year growth so far this year, reaching a record $67.5 billion for the first half of 2023. Downloads were also up by 3.2%.
That’s good news for app developers, publishers, and marketers who rely on the app ecosystem’s revenues to sustain their businesses.
Image Credits: data.ai
Data.ai now attributes last year’s decline to consumers “battling inflation,” which had created a “temporary blip” in the long-term sustained growth of the mobile app market, as opposed to something more endemic to the app ecosystem itself — like global markets reaching a point of saturation in terms of consumer spending, for example.
Last year, consumer spending had declined by a slight, but worrying, 2% to $167 billion. It was the first slowdown since the launch of the App Store and came a year after the app market had seen 19% year-over-year growth in 2021. Data.ai’s 2022 findings were based on consumer spending across all app stores, including third-party Android app stores in China, including paid app installs, in-app purchases, and subscriptions.
At the time, data.ai CEO Theodore Krantz remarked how “macroeconomic factors” had been “dampening growth in mobile spend.” However, it wasn’t clear if the decline had been a short-term correction to the rapid growth following the Covid-19 pandemic or a sign the market had peaked, data.ai today explains. The new analysis proves it appears to be the former which — combined with other factors, including inflation — had tightened consumers’ wallets.
The positive growth in consumer spending actually began in late 2022, as is typical around the holiday season as people buy new phones and tablets as gifts and have more free time on their hands to download, use and spend on mobile apps and games.
That growth continued into the first half of the years as consumers spent a record $67.5 billion on apps and downloaded 76.8 billion apps globally across the iOS App Store and Google Play. (This analysis does not include the third-party app stores as the full-year report does, we should add.)
Consumer spending was up 5.3% year-over-year during the first half of 2023 with 16% growth in apps, while spending in mobile games remain roughly even, data.ai says. While the lack of growth in games could be concerning, the firm believes growth is likely to soon return to this segment of the market as positive growth had already been seen in March and May 2023 after an earlier low point of -13% in May 2022. The current growth rates for games look similar to that at the start of 2020, ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic, in fact.
iOS growth was also ahead of that of Android, as consumer spending on the App Store was up 5.8% year-over-year in the first half of 2023, while Google Play grew 4.3%. That works out to $43.5 billion in consumer spending on iOS and $24 billion on Android. In addition, iOS accounts for nearly 65% of the total app store spending combined, and even higher in non-gaming apps where it’s 71% of the spend.
Image Credits: data.ai
TikTok, for example, is a top app for consumer spending with 31% year-over-year growth. It also became the first app to surpass $2 billion in a half year, with $2.1 billion in consumer spending this year so far, up from $1.7 billion in the first half of 2022. Other top non-gaming apps across iOS and Android include Disney+, YouTube, and Duolingo, at 33%, 29%, and 48%, respectively. (YouTube doesn’t monetize through Google Play, however, data.ai notes.)
Max (combined with HBO Max) also did well, with 3% growth in consumer spending compared with the second half of last year, and lifetime consumer spending of $3 billion.
More broadly, top categories for consumer spending included Games, Entertainment, and Social across iOS and Google Play. Other categories delivering at least half a billion in consumer spending also included Productivity, Business, and News & Magazines, which saw strong growth of 32%, 27%, and 25%, also respectively.
Image Credits: data.ai
Top markets for consumer spending so far this year included the U.S., China, and Japan on iOS and the U.S., Japan, and South Korea for Google Play.
Another metric for app ecosystem health is mobile app and game downloads. These have continued to see growth with 76.8 billion new installs this year so far, which would be even with the second half of 2022 and up 3.2% year-over-year.
Image Credits: data.ai
Thanks to Android’s traction in emerging markets like India, Brazil, and Indonesia, Google Play accounts for more than 3x the number of downloads than iOS. Turkey, Russia, and Indonesia, meanwhile, posted the most growth since the second half of 2022.
Image Credits: data.ai
Download growth is faster on iOS, however, as installs grew 10% year-over-year to 18+ billion, while Google Play installs grew 1.4% year-over-year to 58.7 billion. China, the U.S., and Japan delivered the most iOS downloads, but in terms of growth, Brazil, China, and the U.S. were the markets that delivered.
Games, Tools, and Social were the largest categories by number of downloads, while Games, Productivity, and Tools saw the most growth in absolute downloads. Other top categories included Productivity, Books & Reference, and Health & Fitness, growing 16%, 7%, and 5%, respectively, from the first half of 2022 to the first half of 2023. Travel & Navigations app downloads also grew 19% from the first half of 2019, but this is outpaced by the overall (non-game) app growth of 21%.
Image Credits: data.ai
The top apps by downloads globally across both app stores included TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, CapCut, Snapchat, Telegram, Messenger, WhatsApp Business, and Spotify.
Image Credits: data.ai
Top games were Subway Surfers, Free Fire, Roblox, Candy Crush Saga, Ludo King, Block Blast Adventure Master, Attack Hole, FIFA Soccer, Gardenscapes, and Going Balls.
Image Credits: data.ai
After a worrying decline in 2022, consumer spending on apps returns to record growth by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch
ChatGPT on mobile can now surf the web. But only via Bing.
Today, OpenAI announced that subscribers to ChatGPT Plus, the premium version of the company’s AI-powered chatbot, can use a new feature on the ChatGPT app called Browsing to have ChatGPT search Bing for answers to questions.
Browsing can be enabled by heading to the New Features section of the app settings, selecting “GPT-4” in the model switcher and choosing “Browse with Bing” from the drop-down list. Browsing is available on both the iOS and Android ChatGPT apps.
OpenAI says that Browsing is particularly useful for queries relating to current events and other information that “extend[s] beyond [ChatGPT’s] original training data.” When Browsing is disabled, ChatGPT’s knowledge cuts off in 2021.
Browsing — which Microsoft and OpenAI previously announced would arrive sometime this year, first on the web — certainly makes ChatGPT a more useful assistant, particularly for research. Prior to it, asking ChatGPT questions like “Who won the 2023 March Madness women’s tournament?” wouldn’t yield anything particularly useful — or correct.
But limiting ChatGPT’s search capabilities to Bing seems just short of a user-hostile move. The business motivations are obvious — OpenAI has a close partnership with Microsoft, which has invested over $10 billion in the startup — but Bing is far from the end-all be-all of search engines.
Back in 2011, an analysis found that Bing was potentially unfairly serving more Microsoft-related results than Google links. More recently, a Stanford study showed evidence that Bing’s top search results contained an “alarming” amount of disinformation.
Microsoft undoubtedly continues to improve Bing’s algorithms on the backend. But the problem with ChatGPT’s new Browsing feature is, when Bing inevitably slips up, users won’t have any alternatives to choose from.
In other, less controversial ChatGPT app news, tapping on a search result now takes you directly to the respective point in the conversation. That change — along with Browsing — is rolling out this week, OpenAI says.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT app can now search the web — but only via Bing by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch
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 economy in 2023 hit a few snags, as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to data.ai’s “State of Mobile” report. However, downloads are continuing to grow, up 11% year-over-year in 2022 to reach 255 billion. Consumers are also spending more time in mobile apps than ever before. On Android devices alone, hours spent in 2022 grew 9%, reaching 4.1 trillion.
This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.
Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters
Image Credits: OpenAI (App Store screenshot)
ChatGPT is going mobile. On Thursday, OpenAI announced the launch of an official iOS app that allows users to access its popular AI chatbot on the go, months after the App Store was filled with dubious, unofficial services. The new ChatGPT app will be free to use, free from ads and will allow for voice input via Whisper, the company says, but will initially be limited to U.S. users at launch. Support for other markets will be available in the “coming weeks,” OpenAI said, without offering further details. An Android version is also promised to come “soon.”
Like its desktop counterpart, the new ChatGPT app allows users to interact with an AI chatbot to ask questions without running a traditional web search, plus get advice, find inspiration, learn, research and more. Given the issues with Apple’s own voice assistant, Siri, and its own lack of AI progress, the new release could push more users to try ChatGPT on their phones as their main mobile helper. This could potentially impact Google, as well, as the search engine today benefits from being the default search engine in Safari on Apple’s iPhone.
Consumer interest in AI has been growing, which led to the top 10 mobile AI apps generating double-digit millions in consumer spending before the first quarter of this year even wrapped, but far too many of today’s apps claiming to offer ChatGPT access were effectively scams that tricked users into high-priced subscriptions. Apple doesn’t always promptly take down fleeceware like this, despite the harm to consumers. (Some believe it’s not incentivized to do so given it benefits financially by leaving scam apps up where it can take a cut of the subscription payments.)
Now that there’s an official (and free!) ChatGPT app on the market, there’s little need for consumers to download a paid alternative. If people want more functionality — like faster response times or access to GPT-4 — they can pay OpenAI directly for a ChatGPT Plus subscription.
It remains to be seen how the launch will impact the wider AI chatbot market, or if Apple will begin to quietly pull down some of the more unscrupulous ChatGPT scam apps from the App Store. The app may also shift consumer behavior away from relying on voice assistants like Siri and, later, Google Assistant, as users turn to ChatGPT to answer more of their everyday questions and direct them to new information.
For the time being, the new ChatGPT app is No. 1 on the top free apps chart in the App Store and is also being featured at the top of the App Store’s Apps tab, and in a list of “Must-have” apps for iPhone. However, internally at Apple, staff has been banned from accessing ChatGPT over fears of leaked confidential data.
Open AI may have been the big news this week, but Microsoft also rolled out a number of AI updates to its suite of mobile apps as competition with Google and others heats up.
The company announced a number of changes to Bing, including the rollout of several of the features that it had detailed earlier this month. Across desktop and mobile, this included videos, Knowledge Cards, graphs, better formatting and social sharing capabilities in Bing Chat. Chat history is also arriving across desktop and mobile, allowing users to look back and view a list of their recent activity. (Mobile will receive the feature first, Microsoft says.)
Image Credits: Microsoft
Plus, users will now be able to add a Bing Chat widget to their iOS or Android Home Screen, for faster access to Bing Chat. Later, users will be able to also click the Bing app icon to be taken directly to chat or tap a microphone icon to ask a question.
Users will also be able to start a Bing Chat conversation on the desktop and then continue it on their smartphone — a feature that should arrive by next week. The company says it’s expanded the country and language support for voice input, as well.
In addition, Microsoft is adding Bing Chat to the mobile version of its Edge browser app, which lets you ask questions related to the mobile website you’re viewing, including for it to summarize the article or page. When reading, you’ll soon be able to highlight a word or phrase and have it open a conversation with Bing to learn more about the topic.
The updates included other apps, too, like the SwiftKey keyboard app, which gained the ability to compose text for you, based on the parameters you suggest related to the subject matter, tone, format and length. Microsoft suggests this could be used for writing emails, for example. The feature is coming to iOS and Android in a couple of weeks. An AI-powered translator is also being built into the SwiftKey keyboard.
Image Credits: Microsoft
Meanwhile, Skype users can now use Bing in their group chats.
The pace of app updates here is worth noting. Microsoft only debuted Bing Chat 100 days ago, it noted in its announcement on Tuesday, and it has continuously shipped new features since. The latest round of updates follows news from Google’s I/O developer event, where it opened up access to its AI chatbot Bard, which is now available without a waitlist.
It should be interesting to see how quickly Google follows to add Bard access across its own suite of mobile apps, as Bing is doing, or integrate Bard into its own home screen widgets. For now, Google is testing AI features through Search Labs, where today it houses a handful of projects, including AI-powered Google search features, AI in Google Workspaces, smart note-taking project Tailwind and generative music maker MusicLM.
More details are emerging about Instagram’s Twitter clone due out later this summer. The decentralized social app will allow users to authenticate with their existing credentials in order to post short updates, including text, links, photos and videos, to the platform. Their account details, like usernames, profile photos and even block lists are said to carry over to the new experience, which will also interoperate with decentralized apps like Mastodon.
This week, we understand Meta has been reaching out to celebs and high-profile influencers to get them on board as early adopters. Athletes, actors, producers, showrunners and comedians are said to be the early priorities. In addition, one leak involved screenshots of the new app — or at least mock-ups. These show an app that has a very Twitter-like look and feel, with text posts, likes and comments, but in more of a timeline view that’s less media-heavy that an Instagram feed.
What do you think about Instagram’s Twitter app? Let me know what you’re thinking and hearing via email (sarahp@techcrunch.com) or Signal (415.234.3994)
Image Credits: Apple
Image Credits: NYT
The NYT launched its own audio app. The launch capitalizes on The Times’ acquisition of audio journalism app Audm in 2020, which served as the basis for the new offering. In the newly launched New York Times Audio, the company combines the publication’s top podcasts, like “The Daily,” “The Ezra Klein Show,” “Hard Fork,” “Modern Love,” “The Run-Up” and others, with those made exclusively for the new platform. Thanks to its $25 million acquisition of the production studio behind “Serial,” the app includes content related to that deal, as well, like the namesake show itself, plus new shows from the studio like “The Trojan Horse Affair,” “The Coldest Case in Laramie” and others, as well as “This American Life,” hosted by Ira Glass. Sports talk from The Athletic is also ne included along with Audm’s long-form narrated journalism from non-NYT sources. Audm will now shut down and its subscribers will be moved to NYT Audio. The app arrives following the success of other standalone mobile properties, like NYT Cooking and Games, but it’s unclear if it will see similar traction as users tend to enjoy streaming podcasts in a dedicated app that provides access to all their shows.
More in media…
Image Credits: Apple
Image Credits: Meta
Image Credits: Pew Research Center
Image Credits: Picsart
Image Credits: Soumyabrata Roy / NurPhoto / Getty Images
Image Credits: Artifact screenshot
Image Credits: Public
Image Credits: Apple
Image Credits: SkyLight via Lux
The creators of the popular iPhone camera app Halide are out this week with a new creation: Skylight Forecast, an app that predicts when you can see a spectacular sunset. The app uses dozens of atmospheric factors to make its intelligent predictions about whether you’ll see a great sunset, an average glow or nothing at all. The app also includes Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets and includes several nice touches. For instance, the app lights up in dynamic colors depending on the quality of the sunset, and the icons are adaptive to the circumstances, changing around based on condition. At launch, the app costs $1.99 per month, or $9.99 per year. Though typically the company offers one-time purchase options, it says it can’t do that in this case because of the ongoing costs for weather data.
Missing Dark Sky? The updated version of Carrot Weather out this week brings improved rain alerts via server-side push notifications as to when the rain will start and stop. You can also set a minimum delivery interval to receive these updates more or less often. It also added several new data sources for Europe and Japan, including OpenWeather and other regional sources. Plus, you can see monthly averages for any locations in the Location Details scene or time travel up to 80 years in the past or a year in the future, to compare weather trends, among other things. Some of these features are reserved for Premium subscribers, while others require a Premium Ultra subscription.
This Week in Apps: ChatGPT comes to iPhone, Bing AI efforts expand, Instagram’s Twitter clone by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch
Consumer demand for the Jack Dorsey-backed Twitter alternative Bluesky is outstripping access, according to the latest App Store data and figures published today by the company. In a new FAQ on Bluesky’s website, the company shares that its community has topped 50,000 users. However, estimates provided to TechCrunch by app intelligence company data.ai indicate the decentralized Twitter clone has seen over 375,000 worldwide installs on iOS as of April 26, 2023, and has been ranking highly on Apple and Google’s app stores’ top charts by downloads.
Excitement for Bluesky has also been climbing in recent weeks, thanks to a combination of exclusivity — the app still requires a hard-to-find invite to get in — and the culture its community is creating. The latter has seen the app embrace what has been described as “early Twitter” energy, thanks in part to the numerous meme accounts and shitposting. This results in a sort of frenetic, chaotic, vibe to Bluesky that’s attracting many former Twitter users and particularly those who haven’t quite meshed well with the more serious and structured environment found in the other decentralized Twitter alternative, Mastodon.
But for the time being, Bluesky isn’t capitalizing on the outsized consumer demand for its app.
While other would-be Twitter alternatives like Post and T2 have broadened access to their respective networks, Bluesky invites have become such a hot commodity they’ve been selling for anywhere between $120 to as much as $400 on eBay in recent days.
Image Credits: eBay screenshot
Image Credits: eBay screenshot
Some sellers are now even testing the market for higher prices, as Bluesky demand increases.
(Above: sold invites. Below: Bluesky invites for sale as of May 2, 2023).
Image Credits: eBay screenshot
Consumer interest in the app has also been fueling its rise across the app stores’ top charts, data.ai’s analysis indicates.
The firm found that Bluesky has gained over 375,000 iOS downloads globally, having peaked on April 15th with 66,000 downloads in a single day thanks to becoming the No. 1 app across all categories in Thailand. Before that, the highest level of daily iOS downloads was more than 22,000 on March 22, 2023.
This 375,000 figure is up from the 240,000 iOS installs Bluesky had as of April 20th, 135,000 of which had come just that month, data.ai had recently reported.
The app launched on Google Play in late April, so insights into its traction on Android devices is still forthcoming.
But the analysis indicates that, despite consumers’ lack of access to the new social network, Bluesky has managed to trend on the downloads charts across both Apple’s App Store and Google Play in several markets.
In Japan, for example, Bluesky reached as high as No. 3 among social apps on Google Play by downloads on April 24 after previously reaching No. 8 among social apps on iOS on March 4.
In the U.K., the app was No. 10 among social apps by Google Play downloads on April 26, shortly after reaching No. 10 among social apps by iOS downloads on April 23.
The U.S., meanwhile, has been responsible for much of Bluesky’s more recent growth, the firm said. That’s helped the app reach No. 22 among social apps by Google Play downloads on April 26 and up to the No. 11 spot among social apps by iOS downloads on April 24.
Because of its relative newness, data.ai said it’s not yet able to accurately predict the number of daily or monthly active users at this time.
The rankings are impressive not just because the app is still fresh out of the gate, but because its community is still quite small.
As of a few days ago, Bluesky accounts that aim to follow all the app’s users were following north of 45,000 people. However, according to the FAQ published by Bluesky today, the company says the community now has north of 50,000 users.
The FAQ also attempts to clarify how access to invite codes will be distributed, noting that existing users receive just one invite every 2 weeks they’re on the app. Plus, the company shared that it periodically monitors the social graph, and if it finds that certain users are inviting “other trustworthy participants,” they’ll receive more invites.
This aspect of the invite system makes Bluesky feel even more exclusive than if it were just slowly rolling out access to its waitlist. Instead, getting in now feels like a function of who you know. This has led to existing Bluesky users being asked daily — often by multiple folks — if they have any invite codes to spare. (In other words, your best bet to get a Bluesky invite is to become an existing user’s best friend for the next two weeks!)
Bluesky says it’s limiting access to grow the network “organically,” but if that were the case, it would roll out a few more codes or increase the frequency in order to capitalize on the real-world demand, because that would still be considered organic growth. At this point, restricting invites to 1 every 2 weeks is artificially slowing the app’s growth.
That appears to be by design. The company explains its thinking in the FAQ, saying that it needs to limit bad actors up front.
“Social networks can be abused by spammers and bad actors who might want to manipulate the public conversation. It’s much easier to limit sign-ups and let them spread through an existing social graph than to try to retroactively clean up rampant network abuse,” the post reads. “Long-term, we view this invite code system as a piece of the open source tooling we’re building to help server admins (people running services) to help curate and moderate their communities,” it says.
It’s not clear if the company believes its existing user base can’t be trusted to give out invites responsibly, or if it wants to have more of a hand in who gets in — and who stays out. But with Bluesky invites now selling to the highest bidder on eBay, the company’s plans for keeping out bad actors could be disrupted.
The FAQ details other aspects of Bluesky’s plans, including its AT Protocol for decentralization, and its differentiators from Twitter, like algorithmic choice and composable moderation.
It also tries to clear up the nature of Bluesky’s relationship to Twitter, as it was originally incubated in Twitter while Jack Dorsey was CEO. It was later spun out as an independent company (a PBLLC), having received $13 million from Twitter to kickstart its launch. Now, the FAQ notes that “Twitter closed its service agreement with Bluesky in 2022.” Jack Dorsey is still on Bluesky’s board.
Bluesky was asked for comment on the new figures, but an automated response to press inquiries only pointed us to the new FAQ.
Bluesky invites become a hot commodity as demand for the Twitter alternative outstrips access by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch