Games weren’t the biggest thing on app stores for the first time ever last year

Users spent more in-app on non-game applications than games in 2025.

The mobile app industry has come a long way since early iPhone users would impress their friends by getting their phone out, tilting it at a 45-degree angle near their mouth, and polishing off a virtual pint of frothy beer in seconds on iBeer, an app that reportedly brought its developers $10,000 to $20,000 every day at its peak.

While iBeer may have (understandably) fallen by the wayside in the years since, the business of selling time-consuming content to fill your phone’s home screen and send the temperature of your device soaring has only gotten bigger, with users spending a record $167.4 billion on in-app purchases alone last year, per new Sensor Tower data.

However, according to the same State of Mobile 2026 report, in-app purchases across non-gaming applications actually outweighed those made in games for the first time ever, suggesting that the things many of us use our mobiles for has shifted.

Of course, just like the year before, there are still billions of dollars to be made in mobile games, but worldwide downloads slumped more than 7%, from 54.3 billion in 2024 to 50.4 billion last year, as in-app gaming purchases broadly flatlined. Maybe we are all collectively getting sick of those weird, bad, misleading gaming ads that flood platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

In-app purchases across non-gaming applications surged, conversely, to hit a record $85.6 billion, and — as is becoming a theme for many stories where the amount of cash involved is booming — AI was behind a good chunk of the rise. Indeed, as downloads across generative-AI mobile apps climbed almost 120% last year, so did in-app revenues, with users spending a whopping $5 billion while using apps like ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok.

$110B

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Waymo is seeking to raise $16 billion in a funding round that would value the autonomous car company at nearly $110 billion, Bloomberg reports. That’s higher than earlier Bloomberg estimates for the round and more than double Waymo’s 2024 valuation.

Parent company Google is leading the financing, expected to close in February, by making a $13 billion commitment that would account for a huge chunk of the round.

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China outlaws door handles Tesla is famous for

A new Chinese safety rule will require every vehicle sold in the country to have mechanically operable external and internal door handles that work even without power by 2027. The move would effectively ban the flush, motor-activated door handles Tesla is famous for, and that other EV makers like Xiaomi have also adopted. Tesla is already facing scrutiny over its door designs in the US, where regulators have investigated crashes in which passengers struggled to exit vehicles after power failures.

China Bans Hidden Car Door Handles in World-First Safety Policy

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Tesla’s Europe sales get big headlines — but they’re a small part of the business

Another month, another round of headlines about Tesla’s sales in Europe — a market small enough that the company doesn’t even break out its revenue separately in filings.

The monthly headline bonanza around Tesla’s European sales has to do with the fact that, unlike in the US, there is readily available data on vehicle registrations there. But the availability of those headlines tends to overstate Europe’s importance to Tesla’s overall vehicle business.

In 2025, Tesla sold 238,656 vehicles across the Europe, down 27% from 2024. That represents less than 15% of Tesla’s total global vehicle sales. Early data from several European countries paints a mixed picture at the start of 2026 — declines in France and Norway, increases in Spain and Sweden — but in absolute terms, those markets remain relatively small for Tesla.

By comparison, the US is a much larger and more important market for Tesla, accounting for about 35% of unit sales last year, according to estimates from analyst Troy Teslike, and roughly half of the company’s revenue in 2025. Crucially, vehicle sales are declining there, too.

Tesla registrations in Europe show little recovery in January

Rani Molla1/30/26

Tesla investors like the idea of merging with SpaceX

Tesla is trading up about 2.5% in early trading Friday after reports Thursday that the Elon Musk-led company was considering a merger with SpaceX, another of Musk’s many companies.

That’s a better showing than the stock’s reaction to its better-than-expected earnings a day earlier, after which shares closed down 3.5%. Acquiring a very valuable, entirely different company, it turns out, is a more attractive prospect than watching an existing one’s revenue and profit decline.

Musk is also reportedly considering merging SpaceX with xAI, his artificial intelligence company, which recently combined with his social media platform, X.

SpaceX is actually considering a merger with Tesla or xAI: Report

Musk is also reportedly considering merging SpaceX with xAI, his artificial intelligence company, which recently combined with his social media platform, X.

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AI on Apple

1/30/26

Apple’s record quarter shows that AI doesn’t sell iPhones

Apple just had its best quarter ever without a fully functional AI product.