RIP Video Editors - The Most Downloaded Apps in December

I crunched the numbers and ranked the most downloaded apps in the world in December, and in case you want to jump ahead, shopping apps didn't flood the list this month!

In fact, shopping wasn't even visible... You know what was? Well, let's have a look

Most downloaded apps in December 2022

TikTok was, again, the most downloaded app in the world in December scoring 47 million new downloads from the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates. TikTok had a pretty solid year placing first in 11 of the 12 months of 2022. The only month we ranked it not in 1st was in June, where rival Instagram beat it by a handful of downloads.

And yes, TikTok is still banned in India which happens to be Instagram's biggest market for growth.

Zooming out, we estimate that TikTok made its way into more than 600 million new devices in 2022. Wow!

Instagram was right behind in second place, just a rounding error away at 46 million downloads in December. But!

Right below Instagram was CapCut, TikTok's video editor, which made its way into 41 million devices in December. That's massive for the niche its in, by far outpacing every incumbent.

Facebook and WhatsApp round out the top five with the bottom five remaining mostly the same as November.

Together, the top 10 most downloaded apps in the world had a total of 319 million downloads globally. That's a handful lower than November, but it's a holiday month so I'm not too surprised.

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