What you need to know
- Sensor Tower says that some 13 million U.S. iPhone users have downloaded apps like Widgetsmith to customize their iOS 14 Home Screens.
- The report says that means the top five most popular widget apps have been installed on 15% of U.S. iPhones.
New Sensor Tower data shows that popular iOS 14 apps like Widgetsmith have been downloaded 13 million times since the public release of iOS 14 in September.
From the report:
When Apple's iOS 14 launched two months ago, it introduced homescreen widgets to iPhone and iPad for the first time. According to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data and modeling, the top five most popular widget apps have been installed on an estimated 15 percent of U.S. iPhones.The five most popular homescreen widget apps, which include Widgetsmith, Color Widgets, Photo Widget: Simple, WidgetBox, and Photo Widget, have collectively seen 13 million iPhone installs from the U.S. App Store since iOS 14's public release on September 16. Their downloads peaked during the week of September 21 when they reached 3.8 million installs. So far in November, they have hit 1.7 million installs. Globally, the five apps have collectively reached an estimated 45 million installs to date.
The report also notes that along with these five widget apps, apps that let users replace their Home Screen icons like Brass, App Icons, and ScreenKit have been downloaded around 1.8 million times collectively in the same time frame.
The report notes how this shows iPhone users' "enduring interest" in adding widgets to their iOS devices, something that Android users have been able to do for a number of years.
The strong uptake of Widgets on iOS 14 has been buoyed by support from third parties, Gmail recently rolled out its own iOS 14 widget earlier this week.
