This Week in Apps: Black Friday’s boost, security news and the year’s biggest apps

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. What are developers talking about? What do app publishers and marketers need to know? How are politics impacting the App Store and app businesses? And which apps are everyone using?

This week we look at how the Black Friday weekend played out on mobile (including which non-shopping category that saw a boost in revenue!), as well as a few security-related stories, TikTok’s latest bad press, plus Apple and Google’s best and most downloaded apps of 2019, and more.

Headlines

80% of Android apps are encrypting traffic by default

Google gave an update on Android security this week, noting that 80% of Android applications were encrypting traffic by default, and that percentage was higher for apps targeting Android 9 or higher, with 90% of them encrypting traffic by default. Android protects the traffic entering or leaving the devices with TLS (Transport Layer Security). Its new statistics are related to Android 7’s introduction of the Network Security Configuration in 2016, which allows app developers to configure the network security policy for their app through a declarative configuration file. Apps targeting Android 9 (API level 28) or higher automatically have a policy set by default that prevents unencrypted traffic for every domain. And since Nov. 1, 2019, all apps (including app updates) must target at least Android 9, Google says. That means the percentages will improve as more apps roll out their next updates.

Black Friday boosted mobile game revenue to a record $70M

U.S. sales holiday Black Friday wasn’t just good for online shoppers, who spent a record $7.4 billion in sales, $2.9 billion from smartphones. It also boosted iOS and Android mobile game revenue to a single-day record of $69.7 million in the U.S., according to Sensor Tower. This was the most revenue ever generated in a single day for the category, and it represents a 25% increase over 2018. Marvel Contest of Champions from Kabam led the day with approximately $2.7 million in player spending. Two titles from Playrix — Gardenscapes and Homescapes — also won big, with $1 million and $969,000 in revenue, respectively.

These increases indicate that consumers are looking for all kinds of deals on Black Friday, not just those related to holiday gift-giving. They’re also happy to spend on themselves in games. Mobile publishers caught on to this trend and offered special in-game deals on Black Friday which really paid off.

Did Walmart beat Amazon’s app on Black Friday?

Sensor Tower and Apptopia said it did. App Annie also said it did, but then later took it back (see update). In any event, it must have been a close race. According to Sensor Tower, Walmart’s app reached No.1 on the U.S. App Store on Black Friday with 113,000 new downloads, a year-over-year increase of 23%. Amazon had 102,000 downloads, making it No. 2.

Arguably, many Amazon shoppers already have the app installed, so this is more about Walmart’s e-commerce growth more so than some ding on Amazon.

In fact, Apptopia said that Amazon still had 162% more mobile sessions over the full holiday weekend — meaning Amazon was more shopped than Walmart.

More broadly, mobile shopping is still huge on Black Friday. The top 10 shopping apps grew their new installs by 11% over last year on Black Friday, to reach a combined 527,000 installs.

Report: Android Advanced Protection Program could prevent sideloading

Google’s Advanced Protection Program protects the accounts of those at risks of targeted attacks — like journalists, activists, business leaders, and political campaign teams. This week, 9to5Google found the program may get a new protection feature with the ability to block sideloading of apps, according to an APK breakdown. What’s not yet clear is if program members will have the option to disable the protection, but there are some indications that may be the case. Another feature the report uncovered appears to show that Play Protect will automatically scan all apps, including those from outside the Play Store. This won’t affect the majority of Android users, of course, but it is an indication of where Google believes security risks may be found: sideloaded apps.

Bug hunter suggests Security.plist standard for apps

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Intel says Qualcomm’s business practices drove it out of the modem chip market

It’s not like this wasn’t among the reasons everywhere suspected when Apple suddenly announced it was buying Intel’s modem business, but now the chipmaker has filed a brief in support of the FTC in an ongoing appeal by Qualcomm of a decision made in May. That decision found in favor of the FTC’s allegations that Qualcomm’s licensing arrangements for its IP around CDMA and LTE technologies have choked out other potential competitors.

Intel, in the filing and a new blog post accompanying and explaining the filing from Intel EVP and General Counsel Steven R. Rodgers, says that “Intel suffered the brunt of Qualcomm’s anticompetitive behaviour, was denied opportunities in the modem market, was prevented from making sales to customers and was forced to sell at prices artificially skewed by Qualcomm.” It also specifically notes that it counts itself among the list of “competitors [Qualcomm] forced out of the modem chip market.”

Earlier this year, Apple and Qualcomm agreed to drop ongoing lawsuits the two sometime-partners had filed agains one another, settling a feud in the courts that had started back in 2017 when Apple accused Qualcomm of overcharging it for use of Qualcomm’s patents. The settlement included Apple paying Qualcomm sone-time sum, and the establishment of a six-year licensing agreement, as well as a supply agreement for Qualcomm chipsets to be used in Apple products.

At the same time, Intel announced it was exiting the modem business – an announcement that seemed timely, given that Apple has sought to use Intel modems in recent iPhones to bypass Qualcomm, which is an industry leader when it comes to the supply of wireless communication chips used in smartphones. Then in July, Apple announced that it was acquiring the majority of Intel’s smartphone business, which led many to speculate that eventually Apple will seek to develop its own wireless communication chips in-house in a longer-term play to reduce its reliance on Qualcomm.

Intel clearly isn’t content to just let the situation lie, and since its blog post notes that it has invested “billions” in the modem business it built and then sold to Apple, you get a clear idea of why – definitely sounds like it didn’t recoup all of its sunk costs in the Apple deal, which was worth around $1 billion all told.

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Google’s AI-powered voice recorder and transcription app comes to older Pixel phones

Google’s AI-powered voice recorder app introduced at Google’s October hardware event was one of the company’s more impressive demos. The new app taps into advances in AI, speech processing and speech recognition in order to automatically transcribe a voice recording with few mistakes, in real time as the person is speaking. Unfortunately, Google’s Recorder app was locked to Pixel 4 devices at launch. That has now changed.

As first spotted by Android Police, the Recorder app is available to Android users with older Pixel devices, including Pixel 2, Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a. The updated support was added to the app today, Sensor Tower also confirmed. But the lack of publicity around the launch has led it to see fewer than 1,000 downloads so far.

Google had previously announced its intention to make the app more widely available. In a recent Reddit thread, a company representative said the app would become available to more Pixel users in the future via a software update. They didn’t say when that update would arrive, though.

While there are many voice recorder apps on today’s market, there are few that offer real-time transcriptions. And of those that do — like Otter.ai, for example — the resulting text is often half-garbled. While these services can still be useful as a way to quickly find a section of a recording to then play back and manually transcribe, the lack of accuracy can limit adoption.

Google’s Recorder app was demonstrated at Google’s fall event as capable of taking a far more accurate transcription. Of course, the app was being not put to real-world use at the time — with different types of voices, accents  and background noise, it may not be as accurate. In addition, the app lacks the ability to identify and label different speakers, which could make it more difficult to use in situations like meetings or interviews.

That being said, the app held up well in initial tests in a review by The Wall St. Journal’s Joanna Stern, though it stumbled with accents. Other reviewers found the app to be fairly powerful, too, if a little basic in its overall design. TechCrunch’s review said the transcription was pretty good, but noted also it lacked some features other apps have.

However, Recorder does have an advantage over some of its rivals: it doesn’t require an internet connection to work. Instead, all the recording and transcription capabilities take place directly on the device. That means you could even use the app while in airplane mode.

In addition, a built-in advanced search feature lets you search for sounds, words and phrases and then see a visual depiction of where the search term was spoken in the playback bar so you can go to the recording you need.

Google has put its real-time speech transcription technology to work in a number of ways, besides Recorder. It also introduced live caption technology for Android devices, for example, which brings transcriptions to things like video or audio saved on your device, or video playback outside of YouTube.

The Recorder app is a free download on Google Play.

We’ve reached out to Google for any update on its plans to make Recorder more broadly available across Android. The company hasn’t responded to our questions at this time.

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Future iPhones could drop charging ports altogether

Here’s a little early Christmas present for you. Apple analyst extraordinaire Ming-Chi Kuo is out with his latest Apple opus. Per usual, it’s got a lot of fascinating nuggets, this time projecting as far as 2021 in its look at iPhones to come.

Let’s skip right to that bit, shall we? It seems that 2021 may be the year Apple finally drops the Lightning cable. That would, of course, be good news, given that the port is…how to put this nicely…pretty objectively terrible. Apple, of course, already swapped it out on the iPad Pro for the far-more-ubiquitous-and-generally-better-in-every-way USB C.

What’s even more interesting here, however, is the suggestion that it won’t be USB C there to pick up the pace. 9to5Mac notes that the report suggests a 2021 iPhone would “provide the completely wireless experience.” The implication here being that the charging port drops altogether on the high-end device (like the iPad, it would be more of a gradual sunsetting across the line, starting with the premium model). 

Meizu, notably, tried something similar this year with the very gimmicky (and pricey) Zero. The handset completely dropped ports, speakers and buttons from the equation, as a sort of logical conclusion of broader smartphone trends. For a majority of users, however, I suspect wireless charging is going to have to get some serious speed gains before they’re ready to ditch wired charging altogether.

Interesting tidbits for 2020 include the arrival of several iPhones, arriving in 5.4, 6.1 (x2) and 6.7-inch varieties. All of the above will reportedly sport 5G, with cameras and size being the primary differentiation. The OLED devices will reportedly adopt a similar form factor as the now-ancient iPhone 4, per the report.

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Apple says its ultra wideband technology is why newer iPhones appear to share location data, even when the setting is disabled

This week, security reporter Brian Krebs asked why the newest iPhone 11 Pro appeared to be sending out a user’s location even when the user disabled Location Services in their phone’s settings, in conflict with Apple’s privacy policy and the express wishes of the user.

Apple told Krebs it was “expected behavior” and that there were no security implications, but failed to say assuage fears of a location-leaking bug.

Krebs came to a logical conclusion. “It seems they are saying their phones have some system services that query your location regardless of whether one has disabled this setting individually for all apps and iOS system services,” he wrote.

He wasn’t wrong. The technology giant now has an explanation — two days after Krebs’ article went up and more than half a day after the company declined to comment on the matter.

Newer iPhones — including the iPhone 11 Pro which Krebs used — come with ultra wideband technology, which Apple says gives its newer handsets “spatial awareness” to understand where other ultra wideband devices are located. Apple only advertises one such use for this technology — users wirelessly sharing files over AirDrop — but it’s believed it may become part of the company’s highly anticipated upcoming “tag”-locating feature, which has yet to be announced.

“Ultra wideband technology is an industry standard technology and is subject to international regulatory requirements that require it to be turned off in certain locations,” an Apple spokesperson told TechCrunch. “iOS uses Location Services to help determine if iPhone is in these prohibited locations in order to disable ultra wideband and comply with regulations.”

“The management of ultra wideband compliance and its use of location data is done entirely on the device and Apple is not collecting user location data,” the spokesperson said.

That seems to back up what experts have discerned so far. Will Strafach, chief executive at Guardian Firewall and iOS security expert, said in a tweet that his analysis showed there was “no evidence” that any location data is sent to a remote server.

Apple said it will provide a new dedicated toggle option for the feature in an upcoming iOS update.

But Strafach, like many others, questioned why Apple hadn’t explained the situation better to begin with.

Apple could have said something days ago, immediately squashing rumors with a simple explanation. But it didn’t. That absence of explanation only welcomed speculation. Credit to Krebs for reporting the matter. But Apple’s delayed response made this a far bigger issue than it ever had to be.

iOS 13: Here are the new security and privacy features you need to know

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Future iPhones could drop charging ports altogether

Here’s a little early Christmas present for you. Apple analyst extraordinaire Ming-Chi Kuo is out with his latest Apple opus. Per usual, it’s got a lot of fascinating nuggets, this time projecting as far as 2021 in its look at iPhones to come.

Let’s skip right to that bit, shall we? It seems that 2021 may be the year Apple finally drops the Lightning cable. That would, of course, be good news, given that the port is…how to put this nicely…pretty objectively terrible. Apple, of course, already swapped it out on the iPad Pro for the far-more-ubiquitous-and-generally-better-in-every-way USB C.

What’s even more interesting here, however, is the suggestion that it won’t be USB C there to pick up the pace. 9to5Mac notes that the report suggests a 2021 iPhone would “provide the completely wireless experience.” The implication here being that the charging port drops altogether on the high-end device (like the iPad, it would be more of a gradual sunsetting across the line, starting with the premium model). 

Meizu, notably, tried something similar this year with the very gimmicky (and pricey) Zero. The handset completely dropped ports, speakers and buttons from the equation, as a sort of logical conclusion of broader smartphone trends. For a majority of users, however, I suspect wireless charging is going to have to get some serious speed gains before they’re ready to ditch wired charging altogether.

Interesting tidbits for 2020 include the arrival of several iPhones, arriving in 5.4, 6.1 (x2) and 6.7-inch varieties. All of the above will reportedly sport 5G, with cameras and size being the primary differentiation. The OLED devices will reportedly adopt a similar form factor as the now-ancient iPhone 4, per the report.

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Apple says its ultra wideband technology is why newer iPhones appear to share location data, even when the setting is disabled

This week, security reporter Brian Krebs asked why the newest iPhone 11 Pro appeared to be sending out a user’s location even when the user disabled Location Services in their phone’s settings, in conflict with Apple’s privacy policy and the express wishes of the user.

Apple told Krebs it was “expected behavior” and that there were no security implications, but failed to say assuage fears of a location-leaking bug.

Krebs came to a logical conclusion. “It seems they are saying their phones have some system services that query your location regardless of whether one has disabled this setting individually for all apps and iOS system services,” he wrote.

He wasn’t wrong. The technology giant now has an explanation — two days after Krebs’ article went up and more than half a day after the company declined to comment on the matter.

Newer iPhones — including the iPhone 11 Pro which Krebs used — come with ultra wideband technology, which Apple says gives its newer handsets “spatial awareness” to understand where other ultra wideband devices are located. Apple only advertises one such use for this technology — users wirelessly sharing files over AirDrop — but it’s believed it may become part of the company’s highly anticipated upcoming “tag”-locating feature, which has yet to be announced.

“Ultra wideband technology is an industry standard technology and is subject to international regulatory requirements that require it to be turned off in certain locations,” an Apple spokesperson told TechCrunch. “iOS uses Location Services to help determine if iPhone is in these prohibited locations in order to disable ultra wideband and comply with regulations.”

“The management of ultra wideband compliance and its use of location data is done entirely on the device and Apple is not collecting user location data,” the spokesperson said.

That seems to back up what experts have discerned so far. Will Strafach, chief executive at Guardian Firewall and iOS security expert, said in a tweet that his analysis showed there was “no evidence” that any location data is sent to a remote server.

Apple said it will provide a new dedicated toggle option for the feature in an upcoming iOS update.

But Strafach, like many others, questioned why Apple hadn’t explained the situation better to begin with.

Apple could have said something days ago, immediately squashing rumors with a simple explanation. But it didn’t. That absence of explanation only welcomed speculation. Credit to Krebs for reporting the matter. But Apple’s delayed response made this a far bigger issue than it ever had to be.

iOS 13: Here are the new security and privacy features you need to know

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