TikTok has surpassed Instagram and become the world’s top downloaded app in the first quarter of 2022, according to a report by app market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
The short-video app, which is banned in India, managed to continue to be one of the top-five top downloaded apps worldwide. However, Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — retained its dominance in the app market globally. The Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp as the three top downloaded apps worldwide after TikTok.
Sensor Tower reports that no app has had more downloads than TikTok since the start of 2018. Since the beginning of 2022, the app has been downloaded more than 175 million times, according to the report.
TikTok surpassed 70 million downloads on the App store worldwide for the third time in the first quarter. CapCut, a video editing app from TikTok’s publisher ByteDance, also had the last quarter as its best to date with more than 30 million downloads. It has ranked among the top 10 App Store, Sensor Tower said in its 75-page report.
Alongside the worldwide growth, TikTok has emerged as the top downloaded app on both the App Store and Google Play in the US and on Google play in Europe. The ban in India also didn’t impact much in Asia as TikTok continued to be the top-downloaded app on the App Store in the region. It also moved to the third top downloaded app position on Google Play from the fourth one in the quarter earlier.
The ongoing trend of connecting people over virtual calls — despite the revival of physical meetings — has apparently helped Zoom to grow in the market in which entertainment-focussed apps including TikTok and Face book parent Meta are writing new growth stories.
Sensor Tower said that Zoom had positive quarter-on-quarter growth for the first time in a year by reaching the number six position on Google Play in the US with more than three million downloads. It was the top app on Google Play as recently as the first quarter of 2021, the report said.
Apps including Telegram and WhatsApp have a tough fight in Europe. While WhatsApp managed to take the second position in the list of top downloaded apps in the continent, Telegram also had its second-best quarter in the region in the first quarter of 2022, trailing the nearly 28 million installs it had in the same quarter of 2021, according to Sensor Tower.
WhatsApp was also the top app particularly on the App Store in Europe for the seventh straight quarter in the first quarter. Sensor Tower said that it was also WhatsApp’s best first quarter of the year since 2018.