Demand for Threads Drops Causing a Chart Shuffle - The Most Downloaded Apps in December

Unlike the amazing revenue growth apps saw in December, downloads followed a very different trend - the opposite kind.

I ranked all apps in the App Store and Google Play by downloads and I can tell you December was busy.

Instagram was, again, the most downloaded app in the world. The platform that could see a big influx of users if TikTok is banned saw 48M new downloads in December from the App Store and Google Play, according to Appfigures Intelligence.

That's a bit short of November's total, which surprised me a bit considering so many new phones have been gifted. But when you think about the demographic that got those new phones and their affinity to TikTok, things make more sense.

TikTok was the second most downloaded app in the world in December. Unlike Instagram, its downloads didn't drop. But... they also didn't rise on the global stage. They did rise in the US, but the majority of Growth for TikTok isn't coming from the US so it didn't help it overall.

TikTok is living on borrowed time as the US government is counting the minutes to January 19th, the deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US entity or face a ban from Apple, Google, and on the web.

WhatsApp, Facebook, and ChatGPT round out the top 5 most downloaded apps in December. The entire set is identical to November, but with the same or fewer downloads.

Fewer downloads and more revenue, the trend I talked about for the majority of 2024, continues into 2025. I hope you're not surprised at this point.

CapCut, TikTok's video editor, rose to 6th place after not making it into our chart in November at all. It, too, could be banned next week.

Together, the top 10 most downloaded apps in December made their way into 327M devices globally. That's a few million shy of November's total. Developers, if you're spending any time on user acquisition, make sure you're also spending time on converting those downloads into paying users.