This Week in Apps - Meta's New Battle

This Week in Apps is a short, no-fluff, round-up of interesting things that happened in the mobile industry. Here are our top highlights.

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U.S. Revenue Index (vs. 30 days ago)

Insights

1. Instagram Takes on TikTok's CapCut, But The Video Editing Market is Even More Competitive

This week, Instagram joined the busy and lucrative video editor market with the release of Edits, an app built to do exactly what you'd expect: compete with CapCut.

Not exactly what you were expecting? Well...

CapCut, which is owned by TikTok's parent Bytedance, has become the dominant competitor, gobbling up market share faster than any single incumbent.

But by taking on CapCut, Edits is really competing with them as well. And there are quite a few. And many are making good money.

According to Appfigures Explorer, there are 737 video editing apps on the App Store and Google Play right now. That's pretty competitive! But... It's important to remember that not all are actually getting downloads.

How many are? I added a downloads filter to my Explorer search to further narrow this group down and discovered that 104 of those apps saw at least 10K downloads in the last month. Now that's competitive.

And as you might expect, the leader of the bunch is CapCut, who saw 23M downloads in the last month. That's roughly 30% of the 80M downloads generated by all 104 apps in the last month, according to Appfigures Intelligence.

Edits is competing not only with the leader, CapCut, but also with countless other less-known names that are using ASO and paid ads to get to users. And once users are hooked and have a workflow it's hard to get them to switch.

According to our App Intelligence, Edits has accumulated 7.6M downloads since its release on Tuesday. At this rate it could go toe to toe with CapCut if demand gets sticky.

What's interesting to see is where this demand is coming from, and it isn't the US or the App Store. Google Play has been driving more than 78% of the downloads, led by India and Brazil, with the US in third. These also happen to be the top countries for downloads from the App Store but in reverse order.

I have no doubt that Edits will take a decent chunk of the video editor market and fast, but I don't think it'll claw it away from CapCut because the TikTok audience and the Instagram audience are a bit different. Instead, I expect Edits to take over demand from everyone else, including popular apps like InShot and Splice - the top organic results for this keyword.

Competition leads to innovation but for this industry, competition will require every other app to dig into its marketing and really optimize discovery.

2. Is Bluesky Still Cool? App Downloads Drop to Lowest Point in 2025

Bluesky has positioned itself as the best alternative to X, making its first year out of invite-only beta very tumultuous. On mobile, the service has gone from just around a thousand daily downloads to peaking at nearly 500K daily downloads more than once.

According to Appfigures Intelligence, Bluesky saw more than 20M downloads from the App Store and Google Play since opening to the public last February.

In the last few weeks, however, Bluesky's downloads have dropped to the lowest they've been since the elections, and the trend is looking positive.

Why? Elon.

Bluesky has an "Elon problem" - the platform's popularity is tightly tied to Elon Musk's actions. When he said X might start charging everyone last year Bluesky saw its first major spike in downloads.

When Elon aligned with Trump, Bluesky saw another spike, and throughout the election cycle, Bluesky's downloads rose significantly and even beat X's for a hot second.

Need proof? Now that Elon is busy elsewhere and his focus isn't explicitly on running X, Bluesky's downloads have hit their lowest numbers since the election cycle started.

Bluesky's first substantial downloads spike came last August and drove Bluesky's downloads to as high as 420K/day. The reason? X was banned in Brazil temporarily.

The next spike brought 357K downloads in a single day and was a result of X changing the way user blocking works.

Then came the elections, driving downloads up for several weeks and peaking at 435K downloads followed by the inauguration, which didn't spike downloads as high but still gave Bluesky a substantial increase that lasted about a month.

I love the idea of competition because it ultimately benefits users, but I'm still waiting for Bluesky to break away from being "the other X" and to provide something different. That will end the "Elon problem", but until that happens, I see the current trend continuing.

3. Disney Solitaire is Officially Out and Here's How It Stacks Up Against the Competition

Solitaire, the game children of the 90s probably remember for being built into Windows OS, is making a comeback. Well, kind of.

In the last few months, several big publishers released games that have the word "solitaire" in their name, even though the only similarity between them and the game we remember is that they are built around cards.

Wordscapes Solitaire came out last August, Candy Crush Solitaire came out in February, and the latest release, Disney Solitaire, came out just a few weeks ago.

Disney is a big name, but so is Candy Crush... Let's compare launches!

One of the sessions I was in at GDC was a postmortem of Wordscapes Solitaire. The team at PeopleFun did a lot to prove an idea and then to turn it into a comprehensive game. Wordscapes Solitaire's first week resulted in 117K downloads and $16K of player spending, according to Appfigures estimates.

The game started by monetizing with ads more than IAPs so the revenue is understandable. Still, just in terms of in-app purchases, the game managed to earn about $0.13/download.

The game went on to generate more than $700K/mo. of gross revenue, an average it's still holding, with a lifetime gross RpD of $1.59, which means PeopleFun not only focused on in-app purchases but has also been optimizing aggressively.

Then came Candy Crush in February with a much bigger launch. Our estimates show that Candy Crush Solitaire's first week on the App Store and Google Play resulted in 1.6M downloads and $120K of net revenue. That's the kind of launch I expect from one of the most popular brands on earth, though not revenue.

But while downloads were big, and with a reach like Candy Crush that's very expected, revenue per download was lower than Wordscapes' at just $0.07/download, according to our estimates. Just like Wordscapes, however, gross revenue rose after the launch hitting $1.3M in March and ended April with a lifetime gross RpD of $0.75.

That leads us to Disney Solitaire, which just launched. Between the weird political climate and a confused financial market, I expected player spending to be modest, but that wasn't at all what happened.

In its first week on the App Store and Google Play, Disney Solitaire made its way into 1.3M devices and earned $630K of gross revenue (before store fees), generating $0.48 per download from in-app purchases! The most of all three by far and the fastest growth. I expected downloads to be high, but revenue efficiency is a separate form of art, which SuperPlay, the publisher of Disney Solitaire, seems to be in command of.

Searching for Solitaire on the App Store doesn't return any of these games, a reminder that they're not really competing with the OGs. I looked through Apple Ads to see which of these games run campaigns and while all do, Disney's are the smallest and Wordscapes are the biggest (and by a lot). Considering Wordscapes Solitaire's conversion, this makes a lot of sense.

Games, just like apps, must hyper focus on turning every download into a paying user.

4. Discord is Finally Pushing Toward an IPO, But Does It Have the Numbers?

Earlier this week, Discord's founder announced he's stepping down in order to make room for an industry veteran to take over as CEO. This move reaffirms Discord's plan to go public, which we've known about since last year.

The new CEO, Humam Sakhnini, was the president of King and CSO of Activision Blizzard, so you know Discord isn't playing around here.

Discord started as a chat for gamers but has grown to be much more, powering millions of communities and a large percentage of those aren't even gamers (as much as 80% according to this article).

Here's the obvious question - how's Discord's growth?

Pretty flat lately, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

According to Appfigures Intelligence, Discord's mobile apps brought in about 90M new downloads from the App Store and Google Play in 2024. That's not a small number! But... it's identical to 2023's total and a smidge lower than 2022's 95M. While not exploding, Discord is maintaining momentum, which is better than the trend of downloads dropping, and in a way, exactly what you want heading into an IPO.

Looking at the trend, it's clear stay-at-home propelled demand, and while it subsided, the app is still getting more downloads now than it did before 2020. And when looking at all downloads since 2017, Discord has amassed nearly 700M downloads. That's about 10% of all smartphones in the world.

Revenue is a bit more complicated.

Our estimates show that while Discord's yearly net revenue from its app rose more than 4,600% since 2019 to a whopping $143M, 2024 went in the opposite direction. Discord ended 2024 with $140M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play, a tad lower. And when I say net I mean what Discord gets to keep after Apple's and Google's fees.

Like the flatness of downloads, this isn't ideal, but also isn't terrible. We're still talking about IPO-level revenue. And that's just from mobile.

For a product that's still mostly free and community-driven, these numbers are good. Discord has been slowly layering in subscriptions and premium features without upsetting its user base—something other community apps struggle with.

How does this set up an IPO? Discord's mobile growth shows it can hold a massive audience and monetize it without heavy churn or backlash. It's not the hyper-growth IPO story we used to see, but it is the kind of sticky, expanding revenue stream that fits the current market's appetite for sustainable growth.

I'm no IPO expert, but given this data, I can see Discord pitching itself as an under-monetized giant, with Nitro subscriptions, boosted communities, and integrations offering lots of opportunities once optimized. There's still a massive gap between users and paying users, and I suspect that's what investors would like to see.

And speaking of how investors will see Discord, I think that in the public markets, Discord will end up compared to a weird mix of players:

• Slack feels like the closest cousin, but it's locked into corporate communication. Discord has broader cultural reach and younger, more active audiences, and better community management tools for larger communities.

• Roblox has stronger monetization and a younger user base, and while the two are not at all the same, they do share the community aspect in a way that can inform a smart investor. But Discord offers more flexibility across niches, both for gamers and others.

• Reddit is probably the best comparison culturally, but Reddit has struggled for years to monetize effectively and hasn't been able to do that without alienating its users. Discord has already crossed that bridge more successfully with Nitro and server boosts.

There's no perfect competitor to suggest context so it's up to Discord to paint a picture. It's walking into the IPO ring with better retention than Slack, a wider demographic than Roblox, and a more functional business model than Reddit. That's a strong hand to play.

Obviously, this isn't investment advice and I'm not a financial advisor.

5. This is How to Drive Demand for The Oldest Book in the World

If you've been watching the top charts lately, you may have noticed an unlikely app at the top: Bible Chat. Religious apps aren't common at the top of the charts, making this a solid win for Bible Chat.

How many people are downloading the app? Are they paying? And above all, how's this happening?

Let's start with the downloads. According to Appfigures Intelligence, Bible Chat's downloads have doubled this year and nearly 10xd since the beginning of 2024. In more absolute terms, the app was downloaded 1.5M times in March, the most downloads it's ever seen in a single month.

You could attribute the growth in March to Lent, but I looked at growth last year and while there was a small bump between February and March of 2024, it was tiny in comparison - just 45K extra downloads.

Before we get to the how, if you aren't familiar, Bible Chat is a bible app that also lets you talk to an AI about the scripture. You might think this is a unique niche, but it isn't. According to Appfigures Explorer there are more than 9,000 bible apps on the App Store and Google Play and 46 of those make more than $10K/mo. with Bible Chat leading.

But, Are They Subscribing?

Bible Chat is currently the highest-earning bible app in the App Store and second on Google Play right now. According to our estimates, Bible Chat earned a net total of $6.3M since rolling out back in 2023. That's what Bookvitals, the app's publisher, gets to keep after Apple and Google take their fees. The majority of revenue, over 95%, came from the US App Store.

Like downloads, March was the highest month of revenue, earning Bible Chat $750K of net revenue - a 6x increase when compared to January of 2024.

The rate of growth isn't as fast as downloads, even though the app has a hard paywall with a very "convenient" Try Free button that starts a free trial, but I suspect its main dropoff is its landing UI, which confused even me. That's kind of a "good" problem to have because it means optimization could greatly propel revenue.

So, how did Bible Chat get here?

Is TikTok to Thank?

Many apps get their start on TikTok these days, so I checked Bible Chat's TikTok account and found a lot of videos. Over 500 including six with more than a million views and one with more than 60M views. But... the account hasn't posted in a few months now leading me to believe that's not what's driving demand up in March.

Bible Chat also uses Search Engine Optimization to capture traffic from Google and drive it toward its app. Content is still king in 2025 and it's one of the best strategies for apps to get traffic outside of the store for free.

But that's not all...

Our Apple Ads Intelligence shows that Bible Chat is using Apple Ads more than most of its competitors. The app is spending on nearly 2,000 keywords in the US App Store, more than double the competition! It's also running big campaigns in other English-speaking countries like Australia and Canada and in non-English-speaking countries.

This isn't super common, but it's a great way to get market share in less competitive (and less expensive) geographies.

This is the kind of strategy you want to steal.

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App Intelligence for Everyone!

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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.