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By Lisa Moshfegh, Product Marketing and Aman Bansal, Analyst

As COVID-19 began to spread in the U.S., schools shifted to distance learning, non-essential businesses closed and many employees worked from home. This begs the question: without commutes, breakfast meetings, or morning spin classes, are Americans still waking up as early as they used to? 

Weekday mornings in particular were hectic before coronavirus hit. Getting ready for work, preparing children for school, working out, throwing food in the slow cooker all made for a busy morning before the work day even began. And let’s not forget the time spent commuting. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2018 the average commute time one way was 27 minutes. Many metro areas required more than 30 minutes on average to travel from home to the office. Given the elimination of many morning routines, we suspected Americans may be sleeping later now compared to before the coronavirus disrupted life. In this analysis, we study the change in usage for alarm clock mobile applications to determine if Americans’ sleep habits are indeed shifting. 

Flurry Analytics, part of Verizon Media, is used in 1 million mobile applications worldwide, giving us unique insights into user behavior. In this report, we analyze weekday sessions by hour across several iOS and Android alarm clock mobile applications for the months of January, April and July 2020. Let’s review how morning sleep schedules have shifted. 

The chart above shows the distribution of alarm clock usage in the U.S. between 5 AM and 10 AM, when most alarm clock sessions occur. January 2020 is represented in blue, April in orange, and July in gray. January was a typical month in the U.S. with school in session and unemployment rates at 3.6%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The percentage of alarm app usage peaked at 6 AM and dropped consistently each hour after as Americans rushed off to work and school.

April 2020 was the first full month of shelter-in-place, with unemployment rates jumping to 14.7% according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The peak in wake up times shifted by one hour to 7 AM in April. The curve is flatter than January’s curve, meaning the distribution of waking up is much more spread out in April. Therefore, in April, the combination of shelter-in-place with school and business closures caused Americans to sleep later. And in July, while the peak wake-up time returns to 6 AM, the curve remains flatter than January’s curve indicating Americans’ alarm clock usage trends are somewhere between that of January and April. This makes sense because more people are back to work, but we are far from a return to normal. 

In April and July, Americans show a preference for sleeping later. While the percentage of people setting alarms at 7 AM remains unchanged compared to January, the percentage of people setting alarms before 7 AM has decreased and the percentage of people setting alarms after 7 AM has increased compared to January. The volume of users using an alarm app has also decreased. In July, the number of users dropped 14% YoY and 25% since January. 

By Peter Farago, Flurry GM

With its stronghold in the United States, Apple iPhone sales during Christmas are nothing short of critical for the company’s continued success. In this report, Flurry evaluates the iPhone 11 launch, from September up through the first week of December.

Flurry additionally reviewed device activations of the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max, comparing those to activation trends of earlier models such as the iPhone 7, 8 and X series. Flurry Analytics, part of Verizon Media, is used by over 1 million mobile apps, providing aggregated insights across more than 2 billion active mobile devices per month. Let’s dive in, starting with some important context.

The Release Machine

Each Fall, starting in 2007, Apple has released a new set of iPhones. Some pushed the boundaries of innovation while others delivered more incremental improvements. Up through the release of the iPhone 7, introduced during September 2016, unit growth was exceptional. However, with the launch of the iPhone 8, Apple began facing a combination of market saturation, increased competition and slowing device replacement cycles. In many ways, newer iPhones competed against the quality of Apples’ own older iPhones, as customers held onto their devices past the typical two year period. As the category matured, Apple unit growth slowed. Apple was entering a ‘post-iPhone era.’

Let’s Talk Revenue

In November 2018, Apple announced that it would no longer report unit sales, and instead report revenue. Leveraging its massive iPhone install base, the company began extending revenue through wearables (e.g., Apple Watch, Beats, AirPods) as well as services (e.g., AppleCare, App Store, Apple Pay, Apple Music and the latest Apple Card credit card). While the company continues to set record revenues  – its market cap surpassed $1 trillion in October as it toppled Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company – much of its continued success relies on a healthy iPhone install base onto which services and wearables revenue is stacked. 

A Perfect X?

While this year’s iPhone 11 release (2019) is viewed as more incremental, last year’s XS, XS Max and XR (2018) offered a bigger jump in technology, extending strongly on the previous year’s initial release of the iPhone X (2017) which was co-released with the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus. In particular, the iPhone XS devices pushed the boundary of price points with the fully loaded, high-end XS Max topping out at around $1450. As unit sales slowed, Apple sought to push price points up.

Most importantly, the success of the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR have helped stabilize the company’s dominant, but declining market share in its most valuable market, the United States. Let’s take a look at the multi-year market share trend.

The chart above compares market share in the United States between Apple, Samsung and Other device manufacturers. We selected the full month of September across each year for consistency, and because that’s when Apple typically releases its new devices. Sales of new Apple devices tend to accelerate across October, November and December on their way to Christmas Day, when the largest surge of devices enters the market. From 2017 to 2018, Apple’s share of active devices dropped by nearly 3 percentage points, whereas it stemmed its decline in market share between 2018 and 2019 to just under one percentage point, strongly stabilizing its market share position. From 2017 to 2018, Samsung gained around 1.5 percentage points in market share, but saw slower growth of 1 percentage point between 2018 and 2019. Combined, the Apple and Samsung duopoly managed to reverse market share erosion caused by the rest of the pack. Notable players in ‘Other’ category include LG and Motorola which held 8% and 4% of the US market, respectively, as of September 2019.

Based on prior Flurry analysis, we know that the 2017 iPhone 8 launches were relatively weak compared to the 2018 launches of the premium XS and XS Max models, which extended on the new X platform released by Apple at the end of 2017. In 2018, Apple also changed tack by releasing a high-value yet lower-priced iPhone XR, about a month after releasing the more premium XS devices. The XR not only performed exceptionally well last Christmas, but also continued to drive significant adoption throughout 2019. In short, we believe that the XR has been the primary ballast for Apple’s market share during 2019. And it looks as though the trend is continuing, even after the iPhone 11 launch. 

The iPhone XR Juggernaut

Below is a percent breakdown of the top iPhone models activated in the market during the first week of December 2019. We color-coded the iPhone X series devices orange, the iPhone 11 series blue, and all other devices grey. Inspecting the chart, you’ll notice that the top device is the iPhone XR, which captured 14% of total device activations, followed by the iPhone 11 and then the iPhone 7. As a total series, the X phones captured 29% and the 11 phones captured 26%. The rest, 45%, were spread across older devices.

So why is the XR doing so well? Our hypothesis is that Apple offered a tremendous value with the lowest storage version priced last year at $749. While the XS and XS Max offered a crisper OLED screen, the XR LCD screen was the same that shipped with the 8 and before. Quality differences are hard to discern unless holding the two devices next to each other. The XR also came with the same front camera as the XS, and much of the same rear camera functionality despite having just one camera lens. The XR screen was larger than the XS (but smaller than the most expensive XS Max). The last main difference was storage. Unless you wanted 512GB, you could get the XR with 256GB for $250 less than the equivalent XS and $350 less than the equivalent XS Max.

Now with the 11 series shipping, the XR’s lowest price version has dropped to $599. With incremental changes to the 11 series, mainly around camera and battery life, more value-oriented shoppers continue to reach for the XR. For equivalent-storage devices, iPhone 11 costs $699, iPhone 11 Pro $999 and iPhone 11 Pro Max $1099. This means the XR ranges from $100 to $500 less than the newly available iPhone 11 devices.

The Samsung Flanker 

Strategically, we believe Apple sent its solid-quality XR down-market with a much lower price point to disrupt the market share progress of the Samsung Galaxy line. Over the years, Apple has taken the premium segment of the market while Samsung has grabbed more of the middle of the market. As Apple is hitting the upper limit for price points, reaching market saturation, and facing a smaller quality-gap between both Samsung and its own legacy devices, it chose an effective flanking strategy, turning the XR into a fighting brand. This protects its total device base, upon which it is building a healthy services business, compels more price-sensitive iPhone consumers to upgrade from older devices, and holds the line for the higher-end 11 line to continue to own the premium end of the market.

Can Apple’s Christmas go to 11?

December 27, 2019 | Peter Farago, Flurry GM

Christmas Day in the United States is the single greatest day of the year for new device activations. For Apple, in a maturing U.S. smartphone market in which Samsung continues to take share, Christmas has also become a battleground. 

The importance of Christmas 2019 to Apple can be traced back to Christmas 2018. Entering the 2018 holiday season, Apple was transitioning to the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR. To grow revenue, Apple would need to both increase average selling prices and total market share – a tough feat. While the XS and XS Max pushed the upper limits of price points, the XR was sent down-market as the fighting brand to disrupt Samsung growth. The combination has been potent. Apple delivered record fiscal 2019 revenue while also stabilizing U.S. market share in the face of Samsung’s multi-year advancing growth.

For this report, Flurry studies US Christmas Day 2019 device adoption. Flurry Analytics, part of Verizon Media, is used by over 1 million mobile apps, providing aggregated insights across more than 2 billion active mobile devices per month. Let’s get to some results.

Apple More Than Doubles Device Adoption on Christmas Day

For both Apple and Samsung, device activations increased significantly on Christmas Day.  Compared to the average daily device activation rate between December 1 - 20, Apple’s Christmas Day activations increased by 2.47X. Samsung saw an increase of 1.95X.

Apple Increases Its Market Share on Christmas

Changes in device adoption rates between Apple and Samsung also translated into a shift in market share. Again comparing a baseline period of December 1 - 20 versus December 25th, we show show the market share shift below.

From the first part of December to Christmas Day, Apple increased its market share from 40% to 41.7%. It’s worth considering that they did so on an already very high volume of device activations. While a few percentage points may not seem like much, it’s actually a significant shift at this scale. Meanwhile, Samsung saw a drop from 26.4% to 21.7% during Christmas. Now let’s move to uptake by device model.

iPhone Dominates Top 10 Device Model Activations

The next chart shows the top 10 device models activated on Christmas Day. With 9 of them coming from Apple, it’s nearly an Apple sweep. The only Samsung device to break into the top 10 is the budget-oriented Galaxy A10e taking the ninth spot. For Apple over this holiday season, the iPhone 11 and XR continue to jockey for the top spot. For Christmas, the iPhone 11 finally took the number 1 spot with just over 6% of the market. The XR, still selling well, took about 5.5% share on Christmas. The next four devices are older Apple models: the iPhone 7, 8, 6S and 8 Plus, respectively. Apple’s most advanced device, the iPhone 11 Pro Max captured 2.7% and ranked as the 7th best adopted device on Christmas Day.

Development in The New Year

As device manufacturers continue to drive smartphone innovation, app developers will continue to have a healthy foundation on which to  expand their businesses. Samsung is expected to respond to Apple in January with Lunar New Year, and roll-outs of 5G networks will create new opportunities for innovation. Flurry wishes all our developers and friends a Happy Holidays. We look forward to working with you in 2020.

By: David Lundell, Flurry Product Manager

Flurry recently launched a Data Download feature to make running any analysis outside of the dashboard easy to do. In doing so, we’re able to offer data for export beyond the Event Logs, which this feature replaces. Now you’ll also get session data and a richer set of metadata.

You can now download your mobile application’s raw data in CSV, XML, or JSON formats. The next time you login, it will appear within the Analytics tab under Sessions.

From there, you can select the time period and the format you prefer, as well as filter by either app version or events. You can download up to 30 days’ worth of data at a time, and go back as far as two years. Expect each query to take 10 minutes or less.

Our system can handle multiple queries at the same time and will store each one for you in the Data Download section.

Please note that on August 19th, Data Download will officially replace Event Logs. For more information and a detailed walkthrough, please visit our documentation page.

You don’t have to be a celebrity hairstylist to know that Singaporeans are crazy about their locks, and that specialised haircare products are consistently in high demand here.

The results of a Verizon Media study to investigate consumers’ online shopping behaviour bears this out. Remarkably, we found that online shampoo sales have grown threefold over the past year.

To discover how Singaporeans conduct their coiffing and tend to their tresses, we initiated preliminary research using data drawn from web searches, content consumption and commerce mail by Yahoo users.

What consumers like

We assessed consumers’ purchasing habits across more than 20 types of shampoo. These ranged from products that cater for coloured or straight hair to those that promise to make oily scalps less slick.

We found shampoo shoppers generally find their own hair type to be unique, so the way we perceive our hair has a direct link in influencing our purchasing habits. To put this in perspective, 20% of all shampoo sales in Singapore were for haircare lines that promote hair-loss prevention. This is hardly a surprise given our hot and humid climate.

According to the data we collected, online sales of such shampoos grew one-and-a-half times per quarter last year. At the same time, sales of those promising greater silkiness grew even faster through digital channels.

Four out of 10 of these online shoppers fell between the ages of 35 and 44, with 78% being women – very likely mothers buying shampoos for their families.

Singaporeans care for natural products and fear losing their hair

Further purchasing data analysis revealed important secondary factors, including the lure of natural ingredients by increasingly health-conscious consumers. We found that over the years shoppers have shifted their focus from instantaneous smooth, straight and shiny hair – the type we are used to seeing depicted in commercials– to those that promise a healthy head of hair.

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Dr. Niklas Karlsson, the Chief Scientist and Vice President of Research & Development of Oath talks about DSP and the future role of marketers in the 2019 edition of Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications. 

Check out the full article below.

Programmatic advertising is the cornerstone for companies such as Oath, Google, and Facebook to grow and drive revenue. The strategy uses advanced algorithms and trusted data to automatically place relevant ads that drive sales for advertisers while creating a positive user experience. From a marketer’s perspective, it provides a means for designing and running a marketing campaign with less guess work.

A Demand-Side Platform (DSP) provides a particular venue for programmatic advertising. It is the middleman between an advertiser and one or more open impression exchanges. An open exchange

is an open marketplace where buyers can bid either manually or programmatically to purchase ad impressions. In this context, an impression is an opportunity to show an ad creative (e.g., banner ad, text ad, or pre-roll video commercial) to internet users. The price of an impression purchased through a DSP is determined in an auction held by an ad exchange. Hence, it is dictated by the supply of similar impressions and the demand from competing advertisers. The goal of a DSP is to optimally manage an advertiser‘s marketing budget. For some advertisers, the goal is to drive branding and reach, while for others it is to maximize the number of clicks or sales.

Business Model

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