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In 2024 alone, Apple, NatWest, Laybuy, ZestMoney, and Openpay shut down their BNPL operations, and Zilch reduced its operations. Providers face industry-wide slowing user growth and an inherently low-margin business. And the biggest players are getting even bigger, making it harder for smaller firms to compete.

And the last call-out is that wallet competitors will weigh an Apple, NFC partnership seriously, and we see Block as the most likely candidate to pilot an Apple, NFC partnership in 2025. So let me start first with the banking stuff, Tiffani.

While its integration of health data from different sources should be useful, there are other devices on the market, like the Apple Watch, that already do much of the same. Plus, history hasn’t been kind to smart mirrors. lululemon discontinued its connected Mirror device in 2023 amid low consumer demand, according to Retail Boss.

Brands like Apple have been forced to participate in the country’s price wars to attract consumers and keep lower-priced domestic rivals from taking share. Apple is currently offering discounts on the latest iPhone models to boost Chinese New Year sales after cutting prices during last year’s 618 shopping festival.

Companies large and small will net hundreds of billions in US incremental ecommerce and digital ad dollars in the next two years. Who will be the big winners?

New pre-home- screen video ads are sparking backlash as Roku’s monetization push clashes with users’ expectations for a paid device experience.

Echo users can no longer block voice data sharing as Amazon quietly makes off-device processing mandatory to train Alexa+.

A meteoric rise: DeepSeek’s AI assistant has already become the top free app on the Apple App Store, surpassing ChatGPT. However, the app was hit with a large-scale cyberattack on Monday, limiting new user sign-ups. The company also released an image-generation model comparable to DALL-E 3.

This collaboration led to the launch of the Shein India Fast Fashion app, available on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store. While Chinese players have successfully enticed consumers in Asia-Pacific with unbeatable prices, their advances have not been without road bumps.

If several use cases are of interest, it may be beneficial to select a vendor that can cater to all of them to allow for apples-to-apples comparisons as appropriate. Take advantage of industry resources. The IAB Attention Task Force has developed a comprehensive list of request for information (RFI) questions spanning methodology, product capabilities, pricing details, and more.

Apple. ARtillery Intelligence. Google. International Data Corporation (IDC). Meta. Piper Sandler. The Harris Poll. YouGov.

Apple, Google, Samsung, and Huawei are all launching AI-enabled smartphones with conversational search functionality. As more consumers get accustomed to those capabilities on mobile, desktop behaviors will start to shift. Brands and retailers will reassess their search strategies.

Apple wants to reduce spending on originals and license more content, having invested $20 billion in original content to compete. Consumer research shows 41% of viewers choose services for specific content, while 37% prioritize library size. Our take: Apple's blend of traditional marketing tactics with its tech-forward approach represents a calculated move in the premium streaming wars.

Apple. Affirm. Bank of America. Bankrate. Blackhawk Network. Block. Citi. CivicScience. Discover. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Federal Trade Commission. Fortune. Google Wallet. JPMorgan Chase. Liberty Street Economics. NCSL. PayPal. PYMNTS.com. Stripe. Target. Trustly. Visa. Walmart. Worldpay.

And 45% would use health/fitness platforms (e.g., Peloton, Apple Fitness) if their health plan offered free subscriptions. This article is part of Ä¢¹½AV’s client-only subscription Briefings—daily newsletters authored by industry analysts who are experts in marketing, advertising, media, and tech trends.

It continues to be the most downloaded free app on the US Apple App Store and on Google Play this week, per Appfigures. The shift to RedNote has created unexpected cultural exchanges. RedNote’s English interface hosts mostly Chinese content, prompting US users to learn the language to engage and contribute more. Meanwhile, Chinese users are picking up TikTok slang.

Apple Wallet began offering users a new ticket experience with information like venue maps, local weather forecasts, and recommended Apple Music playlists integrated directly in the wallet. Google Wallet also beefed up its event ticket feature in an August rollout, letting users digitize physical tickets by scanning them in the app. But subscription management features didn’t catch on.

On today’s podcast episode, we discuss why Netflix viewers are spending less time on the platform, how the free ad-supported streaming players are getting on, and how a less discussed social platform has fast become one of the places Americans spend most of their social media time. Tune in to the episode with Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Principal Forecasting Writer Ethan Cramer-Flood, Senior Forecasting Analyst Zach Goldner, and Senior Director of Forecasting, Oscar Orozco. Listen everywhere and watch on YouTube and Spotify.