And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.