The Most Downloaded Apps Worldwide in 2020

2020 has been a strange year from A to Z, and a lot of that played out in the App Store and on Google Play. Using our App Intelligence, we crunched the numbers and ranked apps by their downloads in 2020.

FYI - This is just a taste of a full end-of-year report we're putting together.

It's no surprise classics like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube made the list, but there are a few new contenders that, without an upside-down year like 2020, wouldn't be likely to appear on this list at all.

2020 Is the Year of TikTok

TikTok is having an amazing year in downloads. It's a run that kicked off at the end of 2018, right into 2019, and it seems that none of the negative press, forced sale (maybe) in the U.S., and a ban in India slowed it down in 2020.

According to our estimates, TikTok recorded more than 800 million new downloads globally across its flagship, lite, and regional version of its iOS and Android apps in the first 11 months (and one week) of 2020. This marks a 43% increase from last year's 564 million estimated downloads in the same period in 2019.

And Working from Home

If you only knew Zoom would become the defacto standard of communications before March... right? You could have if you were subscribed to our newsletter.

Zoom, the video-chat platform that wasn't an enterprise solution, became how everyone communicates. Business meetings, family gatherings, birthdays, school, government sessions, and pretty much any other social interaction you can think of has moved to Zoom.

The app is rounding 2020 with more than 485 million downloads according to our estimates, and we're probably undercounting a few because it grew so rapidly. Comparing its 2020 performance to the 16 million downloads it got in 2019 feels irresponsible.

But Zoom wasn't the only one. Google noticed this trend early on, and rebranded Google Hangouts into Google Meet, borrowing popular features from all other solutions, which earned it more than 272 million downloads so far in 2020, according to our intelligence. Can't compare that to the 20 million downloads both Meet and Hangouts got in 2019.

And Political Unrest

Telegram, the encrypted chat service many flocked to all around the world during protests, has seen a lot of action in 2020. A raging pandemic didn't stop millions from taking to the streets to protest, and this year saw a variety of reasons to do that all around the world.

According to our estimates, Telegram added more than 353 million downloads so far this year across the App Store and Google Play, though most, 85%, were from Google Play. Telegram was growing rapidly in 2019 too, but those 118 million estimated downloads pale in comparison to this new haul.

Make sure you subscribe to the newsletter to get our complete year-end review of 2020 as well as news from the mobile sphere in 2021.

App Intelligence for Everyone!

The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

Are you a Journalist? You can get access to our app and market intelligence for free through the Appfigures for Journalists program. Contact us for more details.

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.