TikTok Tumbles but Still On Top - The Highest Earning Apps in February
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February was a weird month in apps and now that it's behind us, let's see if TikTok's maintained its top position even though it was banned in the US, whether AI is making more money, and if streaming is still a money maker.
Hint, it's a yes to all.
TikTok was the highest-earning mobile app in the world in February according to Appfigures Intelligence - even though it was banned in the US for most of the month, and that's it's second biggest source of revenue after China.
But the ban did come at a cost. Our estimates show TikTok's global net revenue dropped 67% from its record-high in December, and the last full month of revenue we have to compare to, down to $200M in February. That means creators took a hit of nearly $50M, which is more than most apps make in a year!
Chief rival YouTube came in second in February with $150M estimated net revenue - that's what Google gets to keep after Apple's fee. YouTube's revenue has been on an upward trend which helped it secure the second spot for a very long time now, but it's just not as steep as TikTok's.
Disney+, Tinder, and Max round out the top five highest earning apps in the world in February - the exact same set from January, but each took a revenue hit.
While the top half of our chart didn't change, the bottom completely changed.
Duolingo dropped out of the top 10 as New Year's resolutions faded, as did Tencent Video, and replaced by Peacock and LinkedIn. It's interesting to see Peacock, which is only available in the US, manage to rank on the same list as global streamers like Disney+ and Max.
Appfigures Intelligence shows that together, the top 10 highest-earning apps in the world drew 966M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play. That's a little under the 1B the group has reached in previous months with the drop directly attributed to the hit TikTok took during the month.
It's back now, so I don't expect this to happen again.
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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.
