HIGHLIGHTS
. The platform owned by China-based ByteDance had a stupendous year and came second to Whatsapp in terms of downloads.
. TikTok witnessed a jump in numbers by 13 per cent from the 655 million downloads the app saw in 2018.
. India contributes majorly to TikTok’s growing popularity
TikTok, a video-sharing social networking app, has dethroned Facebook to become the second most downloaded app in the world in 2019. The platform owned by China-based ByteDance had a stupendous year and came second to Whatsapp in terms of downloads.
As per market analyst Sensor Tower’s ranking, both TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin amassed a total of 740 million downloads in 2019. The reports consist of worldwide downloads for Google Play Store, iPhone and iPad. They, however, did not include data from Apple apps, pre-installed Google apps and Android downloads from third-party stores based in China.
One of its competitors, Likee, a similar platform owned by Singapore based Bigo featured amongst the top 10 with over 330 million downloads. Surprisingly, the majority of Likee users belonged to India.
TikTok witnessed a jump in numbers by 13 per cent from the 655 million downloads the app saw in 2018. Although the company is fidgeting to monetize the app, it had a successful year in terms of revenue grossing over $176.9 million in 2019.
Interestingly, India contributes majorly to TikTok’s growing popularity, 44 percent of total downloads made in 2019 were by Indians.
A Tech In Asia report stated that TikTok is considering the option of building a new feed for advertisers that would include content created by professional publishers on TikTok. Meenakshi Tiwari, an analyst at Forrester told the daily that monetization remains a challenge for the app. Short video has been popularized by TikTok for sure, but bigger social networking platforms like Facebook and Instagram are aware of it and are doing something about it.
In the list shared by Sensor Tower, Whatsapp occupied the top spot and interestingly five Facebook-owned apps featured on the list.
TikTok, despite being a popular app in India, was once banned because of its divisive nature. The app came under the scanner after the Madras High Court claimed that app exposes children to sexual predators, pornographic content and various other harmful activities. However, TikTok assured that they have addressed their concerns and removed inappropriate content present in the app. Following which the ban was lifted and the app was available for download in Google Play Store and App Store.
The ban hampered TikTok’s rapid growth as the downloads dropped by over 33 percent. The parent company ByteDance had revealed that it lost over $500,000 in revenue each day when TikTok was blocked in India
