Global smartphone shipments

Global smartphone shipments and American online-dating revenue, both climbing through the 2010s. The phone in the pocket is, in many cases, the dating app itself. The relationship is, this once, almost causal.

Global smartphone shipments grew from about 175 million in 2009 to over 1.4 billion by 2017 before plateauing as the phone became ubiquitous. US online dating revenue grew from a few hundred million dollars in 2009 to over 5 billion by 2022 as Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and the Match Group portfolio scaled. The relationship is partly causal: dating apps depend almost entirely on mobile, and the smartphone era is what allowed Tinder's swipe-based interface to scale.

Sometimes correlation is one device making another industry possible. The phone and the date, on the same screen.