Without a doubt, January’s biggest stories from the digital ecosystem were related to user privacy. Google announced discontinuing the support for cookies in Chrome and US telcos got in trouble for sharing geo-location data. Catch up on these and other industry stories from our monthly recap below.
If you’re more interested in numbers than stories, the payments analysis guide that we published last month should be more to your liking.
General
- TechCrunch: App stores saw record 204 billion app downloads in 2019, consumer spend of $120 billion
- Strategy Analytics: Apple Becomes World’s No.1 Smartphone Vendor in Q4 2019
- Telecoms: US telcos in line for fine over non-consensual location data sales
- Reuters: Google cutting web cookies, ending lucrative tracking tool for advertisers
Payments
Digital publishing
- What’s New In Publishing: 50% of publishers to double down on subscriptions in 2020, reports Reuters Institute
- What’s New In Publishing: Business Insider’s fascinating approach to paywalls and free content
- What’s New In Publishing: Why micropayments aren’t dead…yet
E-commerce & transportation
- Online Marketplaces: Grab launches its GrabBike pilot program in Malaysia
- Business Standard: Uber sells its India food delivery business to Zomato in all-stock deal
- Tech In Asia: Tokopedia eyes dual listing in US, Indonesia in 3 years
OTT
- Digital TV Europe: SVOD viewing time continued to grow in 2019
- Digital TV Europe: Netflix overachieves on subscriber growth as competition begins to bite in US
- Digital TV Europe: Amazon Prime hits 150 million users
