By ANNE FREIER
Source: www.businessofapps.com, March 2020
Downloads of news apps are skyrocketing in the times of the coronavirus pandemic. According to Apptopia research, the news apps NewsBreak and SmartNews saw downloads shoot up mid-March to over 200% daily.
On its biggest day yet, NewsBreak was installed 225,000 times and SmartNews was installed 142,000 times.
Washington Post also recorded the highest number of downloads (up 76% since January) and daily active users this week (up 23%).
Wall Street Journal and New York Times app downloads were up 39% and 58% respectively.
Meanwhile, both CNN and Fox News app saw a similar spike. Record installs saw them spike at 244% and 127%, respectively.
According to Apptopia the download picture that emerged was that of news aggregation apps being of more interest than those of primary sources. This may be because users are trying to find the latest news faster using different sources.
