Just How Many TikTokers Are There?
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #121 - Big Battles Ahead. Check out the full article for more insights.
TikTok is in trouble in the US. Maybe. Probably. It's hard to tell... But in case you haven't heard, the US Senate is annoyed after an article by BuzzFeed suggested TikTok is sending private data from US users to the motherland + that TikTok lied to the Intelligence Committee.
I was surprised the Senate believed them in the first place, so this, to me, isn't a surprise. At all.
But, just how many Americans are tiktoking?
Well, a lot!
According to our estimates, the TikTok app has been downloaded by more than 220 million devices in the US since 2017.
According to data from Statista, there are 295 million mobile devices in use in the US, which means 3 in 4 American mobile users have downloaded TikTok at some point since it became a teen sensation.
Senators are now asking the FTC to investigate TikTok's data handling processes, and the head of the FCC is asking Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their stores in the US. Things seem pretty grim for TikTok, right?
Well... This isn't the first time TikTok is in hot water, and I suspect that just like the previous times, it'll manage to continue doing what it's doing just the way it feels like doing it without any real consequences.
Why? It already lied to lawmakers multiple times in the past with no real consequences and even faced a near ban by the president, which didn't actually happen. All of that while being one of the most downloaded apps in the US + one of the top earners.
What do you think? Is TikTok going away any time soon?
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
