2020 was a year of uncertainty, but there were a few changes that we could predict with some certainty – a major one being the technological shift, for data could tell us in which direction the usage was headed. One of the biggest changes we’ve experienced is the rise in the usage of personal computers. The resurgence of the personal computer is not necessarily coming at the expense of mobile devices, although people are generally using the mobile phone less than usual as they have been directed to stay at home.
“Customers are using Windows PCs to stay productive, connect and learn in this time. In fact, over 4 trillion minutes are being spent on Windows 10 a month, a 75% increase year on year,” Panos Panay, Chief Product Officer, Microsoft said in a company blog post last month. Mac OS also saw a significant surge in usage. Laptops are clearly the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic’s tech trends, especially in many households where the work situation is fluid, and there is a need for multiple screens in one house at the same time.
The Spotify and Apple controversy very effectively illustrates how brands can utilise these shifts in formulating their roadmap for 2021. Let’s take a look.
Since 2015, Spotify has been encouraging iPhone users to pay for the premium subscription through the website instead of the app. As of 2020, one has to manually visit the website and punch in their card number. This is because Apple does not let any third party app redirect users to their website to make payments. Why this complication, you ask? Well, simply because Apple takes a 30% cut from all sales made through app stores, given the payment is being made for in-app services.
Spotify aimed at creating mass awareness about how paying through the website will be cheaper because then Spotify won’t have to pay Apple the 30%, bringing the price down from USD 12.99 to USD 9.99 per month. The audio streaming giant is not a novice to make this decision out of the blue; it would have resulted from extensive research and strategizing, because detaching from in-app payment is inconveniencing a huge user base. But who doesn’t love discounts, right? And this is akin to a discount, but a permanent one; so maybe that is what Spotify is looking at, to attract more consumers. Spotify is banking on people being attracted towards the lower price because they are being charged a whole 3 dollars less on the Spotify website.
Now, let us move our attention back to the pandemic – a phenomenon that has brought the world to a standstill and pushed people further towards digitization. The demands of at-home schooling and work pushed the personal-computer market to its strongest growth in more than a decade.
The personal computer, given up for dead by many consumers when smartphones became the device of choice, has experienced a huge revival during the COVID-19 pandemic, as workers, students and other consumers suddenly needed new PCs to handle tasks such as videoconferencing. As of 2019, 55.9% of the time spent on websites come from desktop users, compared to 40.1% for mobile users. While a considerable percentage of users are accessing the web from mobile devices, they tend to spend more time on sites when they access them from non-mobile devices.
Given this insight, Spotify’s website payment could be especially beneficial for them. Considering the fact that, under lockdown, people have more time to spend on bigger screens, keyboard and mouse for a better experience and more convenient text input, paying through the website is far more convenient, as is listening to music on the Spotify website.
Given this data and considering the fact that several major multinationals have allowed and encouraged their employees to work from home for the foreseeable future, regardless of the turn the pandemic takes, we are posed with a pertinent question: should apps move towards evolving to desktop versions of themselves and making their website more user-friendly and accessible? And more importantly, will apps still be considered convenient and exercise as much power as they did in the pre-covid era?