Doug Scott

Sensor Tower's State of Mobile 2026 report dropped at year-end, and the numbers tell a clear story: non-game apps overtook mobile games in revenue for the first time in history. Global IAP revenue hit $167 billion (+10.6% YoY), while games grew just 1.3% to $81.75 billion. The China Factor Here's what often gets overlooked: China iOS alone generated $22.1 billion in 2025, ranking second globally behind the US. But Sensor Tower only tracks iOS revenue for China—the actual market is significantly larger. China has over 100 Android app stores due to Google Play's absence, with major players like Huawei AppGallery, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Baidu, and Vivo controlling the majority. These Android channels contributed more than $75 billion in 2025, and China's total mobile app user spending reached approximately $217 billion, making it the world's largest mobile app market. Chinese developers accounted for 37.8% of the top 100 global mobile game publishers' revenue in January 2026, with 36 companies collectively earning $2.18 billion in a single month. Mobile app publishers really can't afford to not enter China—the doors are open. Look at Duolingo: China became their fastest-growing international market and second-largest market for daily active users after entering in 2018. China is now the largest source of test takers worldwide for their English Test product. They established their first international office in Beijing and continue expanding their local team and product offerings. Their revenue hit $483 million in H1 2025 (up 40% YoY), with China growth accelerated by strategic partnerships like Luckin Coffee, which sold over 10 million Duolingo-branded beverages across 26,000 outlets. US Market Reality Most mobile game genres are hitting saturation points in the US market. Downloads fell 7.2% to 50.41 billion, and growth now depends less on adding users and more on expanding lifetime value from existing bases. Time spent in games grew only 0.9%, while engagement patterns diverged—US time spent rebounded after 2024 declines, but China mainland fell. The Monetization Shift Three apps crossed the $1 billion IAP threshold in 2025: ChatGPT, CapCut, and WeTV. Notably, no games made this list. Hybrid-casual was the only gaming segment showing IAP revenue growth, while strategy games saw a 20% revenue surge to exceed $20 billion, driven by titles like Whiteout Survival and Last War. If you have mobile products—games or apps—that aren't monetizing in China yet, let's talk. I've spent years bringing Western products into Asian markets and can help you replicate the Duolingo model in China. Drop me a DM. https://lnkd.in/ge4adfAW #MobileGaming #ChinaMarket #BusinessDevelopment #GamePublishing #MobileApps #SensorTower #MarketIntelligence #AppMonetization #GlobalExpansion #GamingIndustry

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Fever is a live events x media co. They bought DICE, a ticketing platform. Below video explains 3 deal insights 👇 1. Fever connects experience discovery with ticketing to curate demand-driven events aka a content x commerce flywheel.     2. This is Fever’s second ticketing platform acquisition in the last couple months.     3. This is part of a broader M&A theme we’re observing: the combination of media and non-media companies.  Linked in comments is our full M&A deal analysis 👇 -- I'm the founder of RockWater Industries. We do M&A and strategy advisory for creator economy and digital / audio agencies. My DMs are open.

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A fun morning at CES with Bloomberg News talking about 2026 Media Predictions 1. Streamers Will Own Their Discovery Feeds Vertical scrolling feeds move inside streaming apps. Short form becomes the front door, not a distraction. 2. AI Moves from Shiny Object to The Operating System. The experimentation phase is over. AI becomes the connective tissue linking recommendation engines, ad tech, CMS, and analytics into a single intelligence layer. 3. Broadcasters Become Community Aggregators. Traditional broadcasters reinvent themselves by combining subscription tiers, shorts, UGC, and hyper local content. In a fragmented landscape, community wins. 4. Consolidation Is Coming - Build Technical Value Should Not Stop. M&A pressure is mounting but regulatory timelines are long. Smart companies drive technical agility into the stack now instead of waiting for deals that may take years. #AI #CES #M&A

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BREAKING: S&P just downgraded Warner Bros. Discovery to junk status (BB+) Why this matters: This downgrade reflects serious concerns about WBD's financial health three years after the Warner Media acquisition. With debt still weighing heavily on its balance sheet, the company faces critical strategic decisions. Key details: → S&P maintains a "negative" outlook on WBD's credit rating → Linear TV operations seeing accelerated revenue/cash flow declines → EBITDA forecast lowered to $9B for next three years → Leverage expected to remain above 3.5x until 2027 → Potential company split viewed as "credit negative" This downgrade highlights the ongoing transformation in media. Companies with significant linear TV exposure face mounting pressure as viewers shift to streaming. WBD's situation is particularly challenging with: • Higher exposure to general entertainment content • Weaker portfolio of domestic sports rights  • Loss of NBA broadcast rights after 2024/2025 • Smaller ad-supported streaming subscriber base than competitors My analysis: WBD faces a classic innovator's dilemma - invest in growing its streaming business (HBO Max) or focus on debt reduction. While streaming represents the future, the debt burden threatens financial stability. The company's reorganization signals potential separation, but S&P clearly views this as risky from a credit perspective. How should legacy media companies balance growth investments against debt reduction in this challenging environment? 👉 Follow me for more media industry analysis and updates. 🔄 REPOST to help others understand these complex media business dynamics.

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CES 2026 recap and one big prediction Everyone’s all blah blah AI blah AI AI AI blah blah But humans still run into the hard realities of making things work. Anyone who’s built, anything, knows that things break. Things break all the time. After seeing a presentation on all the new technologies coming out…and AI…this QR code breaking reminded me how humans in the loop are still THE core requirement to making anything work. This is true with AI as well. It’s not some magical fix, it needs to be utilized by people to save time…not replace them. So many small problems require humans to do the last mile work to ACTUALLY deliver a desired result. Founders, operators, managers, directors, and C-suite, … The people that don’t just have ideas - the ones who ACTUALLY do the work - this one prediction is for you. You need to remember and most likely you will need to remind everyone around you that at the end of the day someone needs to be responsible for things working in the organization. Including any operation or report or task given to AI. Or else things break. And when they break, who’s responsible? Who’s checking the automation? How? What’s the process? AI replacing people forces more work on the people who ACTUALLY deliver substantial value. The people who’s time is the most valuable and often undervalued because the just get shit done. You know who you are. AI forces more problems onto you. More, onto people higher up in the org, which burns them out faster, and doesn’t keep value in the organization. The result is value actually leaves your company which is more significant than the deminimus cost savings (DOGE and the false promises / real problems are Unfort. an evergreen case study on this for years to come). That value - people’s time - is lost. At the end of the day - it’s HOW people use AI, and finding ways to save time that matters. “AI” is a sham if someone can’t explain the exact type of tech (LLM, reinforced learning, generative task automation etc.) and AI can help do more work, but it should be viewed as a tool to help people do more - ESPECIALLY junior employees who can help drive transformation in doing the difficult and painful work that can’t be automated. Training employees to leverage AI will enable companies to grow faster. BUT, any leader, team, or company who primarily takes a cost savings POV with AI will end up losing to their competitors. Those companies will see their best people burn out, become unsatisfied, and leave faster. If someone doesn’t believe you - share this post with them because chances are you’re one of the people who just gets shit done and other people don’t always understand how or even need to ask. Companies focused on cost savings with AI alone will grow slower than competitors, and by the time they realize their mistake, it may be too late for the to course correct to use new innovations to drive growth (IDE, agentic solutions, spec driven design…)

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