Robinhood and Duolingo, two of the most popular app-based businesses in the United States and globally, are set to go public. Eyeing IPOs of 35 and 3 billion U.S. dollars respectively, the companies have obviously enjoyed great success on the global app markets.
So, in this article, we’ve leveraged our app intelligence solutions to analyze the following:
Robinhood App Analysis
Robinhood is an American financial services company that offers commission-free investing via the Robinhood app.
If the name rings a bell, that’s probably due to the role they played in the recent Wall Street Bets fiasco, where unsophisticated investors on Reddit and Twitter uncovered and undermined short positions held by hedge funds in various meme stocks. (For those unfamiliar with this incident, we covered the story at length, here and here.)
In any event, according to Robinhood, their mission is a noble one — to democratize finance for all. A successful IPO would obviously go a long way to realizing this mission.
Download Estimates (July 23, 2019 - July 22, 2021)
To begin, let’s take a look at one of the more essential app statistics — downloads. In particular, we’ll be focusing on estimated weekly downloads occurring in the period between July 23, 2019 and July 22, 2021.
Android
Over the last two years, the Android version of Robinhood has been downloaded 9,719,068 times, with the vast majority coming from users based in the United States.
Remarkably — albeit, unsurprisingly — Robinhood enjoyed a considerable uptick in downloads at the tail-end of January and early February, right around the time the meme stock shortsqueeze ringleaders directed their ire towards the app’s clearing and settlement practices.
iOS
Robinhood is even more popular among iOS device holders, having been downloaded from the App Store 21,784,631 times over the last two years. And, despite the fact that the iOS version of the app has been downloaded nearly twice as many times during the same timeframe, the overall download trends align quite closely.
Analysis of User Review Sentiment
Next up, user review sentiment. We’ve analyzed every review left for both the Android and iOS versions of the Robinhood app to determine how users feel about their various features and functionalities.
Android
Based on our analysis of reviews for the Android version of Robinhood, the features that generate the most positive user sentiment are User Interface & UX, General Feedback, Advertising, and Notifications & Alerts.
iOS
For the iOS version of Robinhood, User Interface & UX, Uninstall, Connectivity, and General Feedback were the most highly regarded features.
Analysis of User Ratings
Android
Looking at user ratings for the Android version of Robinhood, we see another relic of the Wall Street Bets dust up — an influx of 1-star ratings from indignant traders drove down the app’s average in early February. This spate of negative feedback was, in part, an organized response to what appeared to be an effort by Robinhood leadership to throttle trading on meme stocks.
While the simpler explanation is that the company didn’t have enough cash on hand to protect the sudden spike in trades, the app’s ratings nevertheless suffered for it. And things didn’t tick back up until early May.
iOS
How was the iOS version of Robinhood able to avoid the ire of Redditors? It’s tough to say for certain. But it is conspicuous that, while the Android version has been rated just 421,358 times, the iOS version has 3,654,212 ratings.
Indeed, it could be that Redditors simply lacked the firepower to dent Robinhood’s iOS ratings. On the other hand, there were also reports that Apple and Google had been removing negative feedback, so there may be something to that as well.
Duolingo App Analysis
Duolingo is an American company that offers a number of language-learning tools, including a mobile app, website, and a digital language proficiency assessment exam.
Duolingo comes with considerably less baggage than Robinhood. Their mission since their founding in 2011 has been to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. And while the company has had its share of negative press, it hasn’t generated nearly as much controversy as Robinhood.
Let’s dig into the details.
Download Estimates (July 23, 2019 - July 22, 2021)
Once again, we begin by examining Duolingo’s download history in the period between July 23, 2019 and July 22, 2021.
Android
Since July 23, 2019, the Android version of Duolingo has been downloaded a whopping 100,786,605 times, with 11,236,900 downloads coming from the United States.
iOS
The app has had similar success on Apple devices, notching some 72,199,531 downloads in the App Store. This includes 10,721,295 downloads in the United States alone.
Analysis of User Review Sentiment
Android
Our analysis of user reviews for the Android version of Duolingo reveals that the following features tend to receive the most positive feedback: Signup & Login, Advertising, Tutorial, and Device Compatibility.
iOS
The most highly regarded features of the iOS version were General Feedback, User Interface & UX, Translation & Internationalization, and Pricing & Payments.
Analysis of User Ratings
Android
Not to belabor the point, but there’s not nearly as much drama here as there was for Robinhood. The user ratings for the Android version of Duolingo have held steady at 4.6+ for quite some time, with 11,267,348 total ratings.
iOS
The iOS version has fared even better, registering an average rating of 4.73 (albeit with fewer total ratings).
Conclusion
It’s not surprising that Robinhood and Duolingo are preparing themselves for big IPOs. Despite some drama, both have endearingly admirable goals. Indeed, accessible education and the democratization of financial institutions are noble pursuits in and of themselves.
What’s more, while these apps combine for more than 200 million global downloads across both Google Play and the Apple App Store, this hardly tells the whole story. Consider this. Robinhood’s Snacks Daily podcast allegedly has upwards of 50 million subscribers. Their newsletter is said to have over 30 million subscribers. If this is true, that would make Robinhood’s subscriber-base far larger than those of many of the top traditional media outlets.
Regardless of how Robinhood and Duolingo perform long term, one thing is certain. As these tools, and others like them, extricate education and investment from the sterile institutions that traditionally acted as their gatekeepers, the communities that they’ve built via social media and other digital platforms will play an integral role in determining their longevity.
Indeed, such communities can deliver a degree of openness and transparency that non-digitized institutions could never dream of achieving. And, at the end of the day, that’s why Robinhood and Duolingo are set for multi-billion dollar IPOs.
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