How T-Mobile Leaped TikTok, ChatGPT, and Other Popular Apps to Reach the Top of the App Store!
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I actively watch the top charts, and for months, I've been seeing the pink icon of T-Mobile somewhere up top in the US. I initially thought it was a temporary spike, but that wasn't the case.
In fact, according to our store ranks, T-Mobile hovered in the top 10 overall, which includes both apps and games, for about three months on both the App Store and Google Play in the US.
Momentum started slowing down in recent weeks, but that reversed today (Wednesday) and T-Life is now #1 in the US App Store.
Ranks are interesting but downloads are actionable. Let's have a look at our App Intelligence and also talk about how T-Mobile managed to do this.
Most of you are probably asking "What's T-Life???". I had the exact same question.
T-Life is the "everything" app for T-Mobile's wireless phone service. Kind of. See, for a while T-Mobile had two apps, one for its services and another for its perks. The former was as popular as you'd expect from an app needed to operate a wireless account. The latter got more love because it gave away stuff for free.
Put this on hold because we'll get back to this. Let's talk about the download surge T-Life saw at the end of last year.
According to Appfigures Intelligence, T-Life's daily downloads started rising at the end of October, and by mid November, the app's daily average doubled from an estimated 15K downloads to more than 30K. It didn't stay there too long though.
We estimate that by December, the daily average rose to more than 65K where it stayed for several months.
In total, the surge gave T-Life over 9M new downloads from the App Store and Google Play where the App Store had a pretty consistent lead.
For context, it took T-Life 2 whole years to get a similar number of downloads before October (all of 2022 and 2023).
So, what happened?
T-Mobile combined its account management app with its free perks app. But that wasn't it entirely.
T-Life received account management features back in January of 2024, but T-Mobile's original account management app was still available for download. That changed in October, driving a lot of downloads which resulted in an increase in ranks and visibility. T-Mobile also pushed it very hard which didn't hurt, and the result was sustained high ranks and sustained 3x daily downloads.
Companies, even the seemingly boring ones, are starting to see the value in being visible on the App Store and Google Play and are doing what they can to get a lead. I expect to we'll be seeing more of that as the year marches on.
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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.
