TikTok has recently surpassed, well, everything on the Google Play Store, Apple’s App Store and any other store you can think of to become the worlds most downloaded app of 2020 and 2021 so far.

This milestone makes the app the fifth non-gaming app to cross the 3+ billion downloads, the others being WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Facebook Messenger, which are all (obviously) Facebook-owned.

TikTok by the numbers

According to a report by Sensor Tower, the app doesn’t look like it’s slowing down any time soon. In the first half of 2020, the app saw 619 million first time installs and although that dropped some 38% in the first half of 2021, probably because the app was removed from Indian app stores. That didn’t stop people from spending their money though, consumer in-app spending rose 73% from the same time a year ago.

TikTok is only one of 16 non-game apps that have seen $1+ billion in gross revenue since January 2014, and only five of those, including TikTok, have reached $2.5 billion. The others are Tinder, Netflix, YouTube and Tencent Video.

While its metrics are certainly impressive, it isn’t completely uncontested. Especially now, when it seems like every other app in the social sphere borrows or “draws inspiration from” the ideas of all the others.

Source: Sensor Tower