TikTok is the App of 2021: Most Downloaded and Biggest Moneymaker

People are talking about TikTok all over the world, and it looks like it will be the most popular and most profitable app of the year in 2021. It was the most popular app last year, too. This year, it became the first non-Facebook app to get three billion downloads, according to a report from Sensor Tower.

In addition to spawning an ecosystem of other apps for functions such as uploading movies and analytics to aggregators and simulators, TikTok set record quarterly growth rates. Despite this, there have been a few setbacks on its way to its dominant position. The biggest setback was a complete ban in the lucrative Indian market, which was a big setback. There is still a lot going on with the platform. It’s growing quickly and making people famous who aren’t famous.

A new Sensor Tower data analysis shows that this year was again another successful year for TikTok. Apps that let people share short videos were the most popular in terms of how many people downloaded them on their phones. TikTok beat Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger in this category. Again, it was at the top of the App Store download charts for iOS, ahead of YouTube and WhatsApp. 

TikTok, on the other hand, fell down to third place after Facebook and Instagram. Net downloads for TikTok were 745.9 million, down 24% from the 980.7 million installed last year. TikTok’s main competitors, in terms of how many people have downloaded them, are the same ones that have recently copied some of its most important features. There are many different vertical-video feeds out there, like Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts.

When it comes to profitability, TikTok was the most profitable non-gaming app, based on the total amount of revenue earned by the app’s sales on both the App Store and the Google Play Store combined. Then there came YouTube, Piccoma (an app for taking pictures), and Tinder, after it. 

However, despite dominating App Store income rankings, TikTok has been pushed down to fourth place on Android’s revenue charts by Google One, Piccoma and Disney+, respectively. During the first eleven months of 2021, TikTok made more than $2 billion. TikTok users are expected to spend $2.3 billion this holiday season, according to a prediction by Sensor Tower. It also shows that iOS is still the platform that can spend more money, even though Android has a much bigger audience.

In 2021, Sensor Tower predicts that app spending would exceed $133 billion worldwide. 19.7% more money has been made this year from in-app purchases and subscriptions, as well as from upfront fees and fees for the first month. 

However, it will be interesting to see how things change next year because both Apple and Google are under a lot of pressure for their 30% revenue share policy for in-app transactions. Some big names, like Facebook, already came up with ways to get around the App Store’s fee for apps. The fragmentation of the market, if it continues, may make it impossible for experts to come up with clear revenue estimates generated by an app like TikTok on either platform.