TikTok beats Instagram to top global download rankings this year
TikTok was the world’s most downloaded app in the first quarter this year, according to digital analyst Sensor Tower.
The majority of the top 10 most downloaded apps were social media platforms, with US-owned Meta and China’s ByteDance owning six of them.
Meta’s four platforms on the list are Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger, while ByteDance owns TikTok and video-editing platform CapCut.
TikTok also topped the download rankings throughout last year, as the world sought relief from the Covid-19 pandemic.
"TikTok surpassed 3.5 billion all-time downloads in the first quarter of 2021, becoming just the fifth app (and the only one not owned by Meta) to cross this threshold," Sensor Tower said. "No app has had more downloads than TikTok since the start of 2018."
Apart from being the most downloaded app in the world, TikTok is also the highest-grossing non-game app, based on first-quarter revenue from the App Store and Google Play. Impressively, it achieved its top spot despite being banned in India since 2020.
TikTok generated US$821 million (9.57 billion baht) in consumer spending in the first quarter of this year. The video-sharing platform was the top-grossing app on the App Store, and the second-highest-grossing on Google Play, coming just after Google One.
