According to data by analytics firm Sensor Tower, with over 58 million downloads in March alone, TikTok has become the most downloaded non-gaming app globally. Facebook took second place with over 56 million installs in March. Facebook-owned Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger came third, fourth and fifth places respectively in the list of the most downloaded non-gaming apps for the month of March.
TikTok is a video-sharing platform owned by ByteDance which is a Chinese company. The platform can be used to make short videos that can range from genres of comedy, to music, dance and even education. The duration of the short videos that can be created using TikTok’s platform range from 15 seconds to one minute, and three minutes for some users. TikTok is known as Douyin in China where it originates from and is an international version of the original Douyin platform which was introduced into the Chinese market in September 2016. Later in 2017, TikTok was launched for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China and became available globally after it was merged with another popular Chinese social media service; Musical.ly on August 2, 2018.
According to Sensor Tower, China had the largest TikTok (Douyin) installs for the month of March with 11 percent followed by the US at 10 percent. For the second most downloaded non-gaming app; Facebook, the largest downloads were from India and was 25 percent of the whole downloads. The US came in second place at 8 percent.
Other apps that made it to the list of top ten most downloaded non-gaming apps include Snapchat, Josh, Zoom, Telegram and CapCut.
Although TikTok was the overall most downloaded non-gaming app in the month of March, data showed that Facebook retained the title of the most downloaded non-gaming app on Google Play Store. On Google Play Store’s list of most downloaded non-gaming app, ShareChat’s short video platform Moj, which is similar to TikTok made part of the list.
TikTok continues to thrive and be an inspiration for short-video features on already existing apps, and new short video sharing platforms that are springing up.
