Downloads of Chinese Retailers Temu and SHEIN Dropped 89% in April

The US is in a trade war with China right now and retail apps are not exempt. Temu and SHEIN, two retailers that are focused on extremely low cost items, have seen downloads shrink by more than 80% since March, dipping to new lows the pair has never operated in.

The two were immune to tariffs thanks to the di minimis exemption, which says that orders by individuals worth less than $800 can skip formal customs and don't pay any duty. That's no longer the case, and as soon as that happened downloads dropped almost overnight.

According to Appfigures Intelligence, Temu averaged around 650K downloads/week from the App Store and Google Play in the US in early March. SHEIN was looking at a weekly average of 430K downloads/week.

This is before the exemption was threatened and before tariffs replaced the weather as a conversation starter.

The two have had their downloads roam around that average all the way back to last year.

In April, an executive order ended the exemption as of the beginning of May, and the downloads dropped nearly instantly. Our estimates show that as of last week, Temu's downloads in the US dropped to 176K and SHEIN's to 172K.

That's the lowest the two have ever operated at.

When I saw this drop I immediately thought it had something to do with prices, expecting prices to rise significantly. But that's not the case. A short browsing session showed the same ridiculously low prices I've seen last summer when I was testing the app for the first time.

And it's not that Temu and SHEIN aren't actively engaging their users either. Since reinstalling the app a few days ago I get at least 5 push notifications and text messages every day.

What's going on???

If the prices are still low and the apps are still engaging users, why are downloads down so much?

Ads.

Temu and SHEIN use very large ad campaigns on and off the App Store to get downloads. According to our Apple Ads Intelligence, in the last six months, the two had campaigns that span nearly 10K keywords. Most apps barely graze the hundreds. And as large as they are, they're also heavy in spend.

For example, Temu advertises on the keyword "Instagram" in the US, along with more than 100 other apps. Unlike the others, however, Temu has the highest share of impressions! Same for "roblox", "etsy", "amazon", and even "team", which are very popular (aka expensive).

Data from our Apple Ads Intelligence suggests that Temu turned off Apple ads completely in the US and SHEIN left only a small campaign running focused on keywords related to its name.