Tag Archive for: economy

War and the app economy, Google’s Messages update, Telegram ‘TV’ – TechCrunch

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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 continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China grew 19% in 2021 to reach $170 billion. Downloads of apps also grew by 5%, reaching 230 billion in 2021, and mobile ad spend grew 23% year over year to reach $295 billion.

Today’s consumers now spend more time in apps than ever before — even topping the time they spend watching TV, in some cases. The average American watches 3.1 hours of TV per day, for example, but in 2021, they spent 4.1 hours on their mobile device. And they’re not even the world’s heaviest mobile users. In markets like Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, users surpassed five hours per day in mobile apps in 2021.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours, either. They can grow to become huge businesses. In 2021, 233 apps and games generated over $100 million in consumer spend, and 13 topped $1 billion in revenue. This was up 20% from 2020, when 193 apps and games topped $100 million in annual consumer spend, and just eight apps topped $1 billion.

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 suggestions about new apps to try, too.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Russia’s app economy shuts down

Image Credits: Mika Baumeister / Unsplash

As the Russia-Ukraine war continued this week, the app ecosystem also saw further impacts. As businesses pulled out of Russia, the ability for Russian consumers to transact on the app stores and in apps is similarly being impacted. This week, Google announced it was suspending Google Play’s billing system for users in Russia in the “coming days,” which means Russian users won’t be able to purchase apps…

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China’s Economy Is Slowing, a Worrying Sign for the World

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BEIJING — Construction and property sales have slumped. Small businesses have shut because of rising costs and weak sales. Debt-laden local governments are cutting the pay of civil servants.

China’s economy slowed markedly in the final months of last year as government measures to limit real estate speculation hurt other sectors as well. Lockdowns and travel restrictions to contain the coronavirus also dented consumer spending. Stringent regulations on everything from internet businesses to after-school tutoring companies have set off a wave of layoffs.

China’s National Bureau of Statistics said Monday that economic output from October through December was only 4 percent higher than during the same period a year earlier. That was a deceleration from the 4.9 percent growth in the third quarter, July through September.

The world’s demand for consumer electronics, furniture and other home comforts during the pandemic has produced record-setting exports for China, preventing its growth from stalling. Over all of last year, China’s economic output was 8.1 percent higher than in 2020, the government said. But much of the growth was in the first half of last year.

The snapshot of China’s economy, the main locomotive of global growth in the last few years, adds to expectations that the broader world economic outlook is beginning to dim. Making matters worse, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is now starting to spread in China, leading to more restrictions around the country and raising fears of renewed disruption of supply chains.

The slowing economy poses a dilemma for China’s leaders. The measures they have imposed to address income inequality and rein in companies are part of a long-term plan to protect the economy and national security. But officials are wary of causing short-term economic instability, particularly in a year of unusual political importance.

Next month, Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics, which will focus an international spotlight on the country’s performance. In the fall, Xi Jinping, China’s leader, is expected to claim a third five-year term at a Communist Party congress.

Mr. Xi has sought to strike an optimistic note. “We have every confidence in…

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War room to fight cyber wars, secure economy

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A comprehensive policy must be put together to ring fence cyber fraudsters, mafia and hackers to insulate Indian financial markets.

Even as the RBI readies its plans to launch digital rupee later this year, government and the banking regulator’s big focus will have to be on insulating Indian economy from cyber frauds, graft and securing the country’s financial interests.
Enhancing economic security in the cyber world would be pre-requisite to further opening currency space through digital instruments. Given the cynical innovation in cyber-attacks that have been reported globally, scaling up the firewalls is the only option while making it a breeze for consumers to undertake financial transactions.
On the top of it, introduction of digital currency would lead to new vulnerabilities vis-à-vis fraudsters and possible instability that security breaches could lead to in the economy. Reports said that at least 900 Indians were scammed of over Rs 1,200 crore in an initial public offering of a non-existent crypto currency named “ICO”. This is only the tip of the iceberg in the world of cybercrimes on economic front.
While vetoing the proposal to introduce private crypto currencies, these concerns and impending economic uneasiness were flagged by the country’s central banker and RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will do well in rolling out a policy to secure India’s economic and financial interests in the cyber world. Union Budget to be presented on February 1 should kick off such a policy framework. Securing the financial ecosystem is particularly significant as more and more transactions are going online. As per data released by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), in December 2020 alone, over 4.56 billion transactions involving Rs 8.27 trillion (Rs 8.27 lakh crore) have gone online through united payments interface or UPI.
Akin to consultations on crypto currencies led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, multi-stakeholders meeting on securing Indian economy in cyber space should be kicked off immediately.
As per Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), cybercrimes are on the rise in India. Till June 2021,…

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North Korean Army of Cybercriminals Props Up Kim’s Nuclear Program and Economy

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Kim Jong Un marked a decade as supreme leader of North Korea in December. Whether he can hold on to power for another 10 years may depend on state hackers, whose cybercrimes finance his nuclear arms program and prop up the economy.

According to the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, North Korea’s state-backed “malicious cyberactivities” target banks around the world, steal defense secrets, extort money through ransomware, hijack digitally mined currency, and launder ill-gotten gains through cryptocurrency exchanges. Kim’s regime has already taken in as much as $2.3 billion through cybercrimes and is geared to rake in even more, U.S. and United Nations investigators have said.

The cybercrimes have provided a lifeline for the struggling North Korean economy, which has been hobbled by sanctions. Kim has shown little interest in returning to negotiations that could lead to a lifting of sanctions if North Korea winds down its nuclear arms program.

North Korea real GDP under Kim Jong Un

Annual change

Data: Bank of Korea

Money from cybercrimes represents about 8% of North Korea’s estimated economy in 2020, which is smaller than when Kim took power, according to the Bank of Korea in Seoul. (The bank for years has provided the best available accounting on the economic activity of the secretive state.) Kim’s decision to shut borders because of Covid-19 suspended the little legal trade North Korea had and helped send the economy into its biggest contraction in more than two decades.

Kim’s regime has two means of evading global sanctions, which were imposed to punish it for nuclear and ballistic missile tests. One is the ship-to-ship transfer of commodities such as coal: A North Korean vessel will shift its cargo to another vessel, or the other way around, and both vessels typically try to cloak their identity.

The other is the cyberarmy. Its documented cybercrimes include…

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