If you've been watching the top apps in the US you'd probably know about this trend but you may not know its magnitude (and impact on the competition).
The trend I'm talking about is the rise of CapCut, TikTok's standalone video editor. While the app has been out for a few years now, it only started monetizing recently. And that's moving very fast.
CapCut has been one of the most downloaded apps in the US for quite a while now. Right now, it's the #2 most downloaded app in the US App Store and the 5th most downloaded app on Google Play.
That translates to around a million downloads every day.
Downloads aren't necessarily a good proxy for growth for CapCut though, because a mention in the TikTok app is more than enough to net enough downloads that'd push it to the top. Plus, TikTok's parent ByteDance has enough to spend on external ads to get as many downloads as it wants.
A better proxy would be revenue.
CapCut recently rolled out an in-app purchase that unlocks new features.
In January, daily net revenue from the App Store started small at around $20K. And that's net meaning what ByteDance gets to keep after forking over fees to Apple.
By the beginning of February, that daily figure grew to $30K, and by April it was already at $56K.
You might be thinking, that's not that much money. But keep in mind, these are daily figures that keep growing every single day.
As of this Wednesday, daily net revenue was up to $82K!
At this rate, CapCut's revenue will outpace the leader, Facetune, by the summer, and there's no real reason for this growth to slow down as TikTok continues to grow.
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