Weekend slices: TikTok beats FB, FTC wants FB to breakout WA and Insta, HBO Max disrupts the movie business, Cadbury Crunchy is here, Ikea goes after people with 'big dreams, thin wallets' in Mumbai
A weekly roundup of stories of growth, innovation, strategy and new launches
TikTok beat Facebook (FB) in downloads, which is a huge thing and experts are still trying to figure if TikTok is a bigger threat to FB or Netflix. What I found more interesting is it’s move up the spend charts and its all not advertising (will write on that soon). The report from AppAnnie quoted in this Fast Company article also tells us that
Global spending across iOS and Google Play stores rose 25% to $112 billion in 2020.
Though Android has more users, Apple’s iOS App Store still managed to take 65 cents of every dollar of that $112 billion spent.
Games were the driving force behind that $112 billion, too. Games across iOS and Android took 71 cents of every dollar of the $112 billion spent.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing Facebook (FB) to unwind its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. With it’s waning popularity among younger audience, Instagram is critical to FB and a big fight is coming. FB’s closeness to Trump looked like it would stave off the TikTok challenge but one can expect the new order to ‘unfriend’ FB. More details of the case in this Verge article.
HBO Max (Warner Bros) aims to disrupt the movie theater business with same day streaming. Plans are to release its entire 2021 ‘slate’ simultaneously in theaters and online. That means abandoning the age old tradition of ‘windowing’, giving an exclusive run to theaters before going online. Christopher Nolan of Batman, Inception and more recently, Tenet fame told the Hollywood Reporter:
“Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service.”
Jason Kilar, CEO of WarnerMedia has said this move was made for the fans and told CNBC, “If we start our days and end our days focused on the customer, we’re going to lead the industry.”
Expect a blockbuster.
In India, Mondelez through the Cadbury brand is trying to own the ‘morning snacking’ space and announced its second extension (after cereals) by launching Crunchy, a cookie.
Sudhanshu Nagpal, associate director, marketing, biscuits, Mondelez India, said in a Business Standard article:
"Bournvita is a legacy brand, which has stood for nourishment for over 70 years. We wanted to build on this equity of nutrition and health by looking at all morning snacking occasions. Parts of it have been unveiled now with the two launches we've had in the last few months. This journey will continue into the future".”
Within biscuits, this will be the fourth launch after Oreo in 2011, Bournvita biscuits in 2016 and Cadbury Chocobake cookies in early 2020.
Ikea announced its second store in India, a half a million sqft space in Navi Mumbai for Indians with “big dreams and thin wallets". The ‘thin wallets’ makes sense given it is over 30 kms (which is like 100 in Mumbai traffic) from South Mumbai, where the fat cats live.
Read all about it in this Mint article.
And lastly, RazorPay launches its own app store for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India. From another Mint piece:
The company, which raised $100 million from Singapore’s GIC Pte Ltd and existing investor Sequoia India in October, will also set up a ₹1 crore fund for app developers who aim to build products for local SMEs as it launches its own business-to-business (B2B) app store.
Look like this unicorn is setting itself up as a nice buyout target.
Have a great weekend and let me know what you would like me to write about in depth in this newsletter.
Cheers!
Suprio