Tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, or MKBHD, introduced on Monday that his cellphone wallpaper app Panels is shutting down.
Followers had excessive hopes for Brownlee’s foray into app improvement, given his repute as an eagle-eyed tech reviewer who has amassed greater than 20 million followers on YouTube. He’s so influential that some blamed his commentary on Humane AI and Fisker for these corporations’ eventual failures. (We expect the actual challenge is that you simply shouldn’t elevate $230 million if in case you have no product.) But from the time Brownlee launched Panels in September 2024, the app struggled to search out an viewers of its personal.
“We knew it was area of interest, however we made errors in making our first app, and finally, we weren’t in a position to flip it into the imaginative and prescient I had,” Brownlee mentioned in an unlisted YouTube video. In a blog post, he added that “the make-up of the event crew modified,” and he was unable to search out the precise collaborators to develop the app.
Brownlee was impressed to create Panels as a result of when he posts video opinions of telephones, tablets, and computer systems, followers all the time level out how gorgeous his wallpapers and lock screens are. When he first introduced the app, he identified that in the event you sort “the place does mkbhd …” into Google, one of many first ideas is “… get his wallpapers.”
Panels partnered with artists to promote distinct, high-resolution wallpapers, which customers might entry at a value of $50 per 12 months, or $12 monthly (the artists acquired a lower of these funds). However Brownlee couldn’t overcome the problem of making an attempt to create a paying marketplace for one thing that buyers should not accustomed to paying for — it’s simpler to simply pull a picture from the web, or take a cute picture of your canine.
Due to Brownlee’s stature, Panels ranked No. 1 on the iOS and Google Play charts for photographs apps throughout its launch month. The app couldn’t maintain that momentum.
Based on the app intelligence agency Appfigures, Panels reached about 900,000 lifetime downloads and $95,000 in client spending throughout iOS and Android. Final month, the app solely acquired 3,000 downloads and $500 in client spending, dipping too low to rank on U.S. app shops.
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Per Panels’ personal disclosure, customers downloaded greater than 2 million wallpapers from the app.
Panels will start to refund customers with lively annual subscriptions when the app formally shuts down on December 31, 2025. Nonetheless, Panels’ weblog publish outlines methods for patrons to get their a reimbursement faster. After the app shutdown, Panels says all consumer knowledge might be deleted, and the app code might be open sourced so different builders can construct on it, in the event that they so need.
