INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
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.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with arecord 204 billion downloads in 2019and $120 billion in consumer spending in
2019, according to App Annie &State of Mobile& annual report
People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV
Apps aren''t just a way to pass idle hours — they&re a big business
In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.
In this Extra Crunch
series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.
This week we&re continuing to look at
how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of mobile applications, including Apple and Google plans to team up on a contact tracing
platform and other COVID-19 apps worldwide
We&re also looking at how WhatsApp is fighting fake news, and how home quarantines are impacting online grocery and dating applications
In non-COVID-19 news, we look at Quibi debut, Facebook new app for couples and a possible iOS version of Android &Slices,& among other
things.
Coronavirus Special Coverage
Apple and Google partner on COVID-19 tracing tools
Apple and Google announced on Friday a plan to
join forces to create a decentralized tracing tool to help people determine if they&ve been exposed to someone with COVID-19
The first phase of the project is an API that public health agencies can integrate into their own apps
This will be followed by a system-level contact tracing system that works across iOS and Android and is opt-in
The system will involve transmitting an anonymous ID over Bluetooth
The servers will relay your last 14 days of rotating IDs to other devices that look for a match based on time spent and distance between two
If a match is found, you&re notified so you can get tested and self-quarantine.
The APIs will be available in May, while the Bluetooth-based
system will be released in the months ahead.
Other COVID-19 apps in the news
EU suggests standardization: This week, the EU began pushing
for its 27 nations to develop common standards for coronavirus tracking technologies that would make apps interoperable or even perhaps
develop a single app to be used across the bloc, Bloomberg reported
Today, multiple developers in the U.K., Germany and elsewhere are working on mobile phone apps to track people who&ve been exposed to the
coronavirus, but the data will be harder to aggregate and understand in its fractured state.
France to develop a contact-tracing app: France
is officially working on a smartphone app to slow the spread of COVID-19, by tracking people living in France
The app will leverage the PEPP-PT protocol, which will involve an open standard using BLE to identify other phones running the app.
How
Chinese apps handled COVID-19: A post from Dan Grover analyzes how Chinese apps from major tech companies like Baidu, WeChat, Alipay and
others worked to help people get through the coronavirus crisis by offering statistics, e-medicine, tools for quarantine, e-commerce and
tools to check your exposure
By comparison, the United States has largely just added PSAs from the CDC and WHO to their platforms, instead of having offered more robust
The pros and cons of both are debated from an app-centric point of view, which makes for interesting reading from a more technical
perspective.
COVID-19 symptom checker from startup Zoe arrives in United States A free iOS andAndroid application called COVID Symptom
Tracker was originally developed in partnership with food science startup Zoe and released first in the U.K
After a million downloads, the app is now launching in the United States
Stanford Medicine app helps first responders get tested: Stanford,
in partnership with Apple, launched an app that helps first responders get access to drive-thru coronavirus tests
This includes front-line workers like police officers, firefighters and paramedics
The service is limited to Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in California for now, but will later expand to other states.
