Should TikTok Even Care About the US? The Most Downloaded Apps in the World in January
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Apple's Latest Sherlock. Check out the full article for more insights.
I crunched the numbers and ranked the most downloaded apps in the world in January, and didn't expect these results!
Instagram was not the most downloaded app in the world in January. No no! Instagram was dethroned after more than a year of being #1 by... TikTok!
TikTok was the most downloaded app in January with 49M downloads, according to our App Intelligence, beating rival Instagram by just a smidge. As the saying goes, "no news is bad news".
While the US is a major revenue source for TikTok it isn't for downloads. the US ranked 5th in terms of new downloads in December, adding 5% to TikTok's total. Indonesia is TikTok's biggest source of new downloads, adding 10% to its total in December.
Both TikTok and Instagram saw downloads increase in January. In fact, every single app in our top 10 list saw higher downloads in January vs December - except for one.
Facebook, WhatsApp, and ChatGPT round out the top five most downloaded apps in the world in January. The exact same list as in December but with Facebook and WhatsApp flipped.
Threads is the only app in the list that saw fewer downloads in January vs December. I compared it against Bluesky and X to see if it's a market trend or not and it isn't, Threads is the only one that declined while the other two grew. But Threads continues to get more downloads in absolute terms.
Which do you use?
Together, the top 10 most downloaded apps in the world drew 337M downloads from the App Store and Google Play in January, according to our App Intelligence. A small but noticeable increase from December, and a good sign that 2024's big trend may be challenged in 2025.
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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.
