TikTok has just crossed a major milestone, having racked up a total of 2 billion downloads globally on the Apple App and Google Play stores.
That stat comes care of analytics company Sensor Tower, and arrives just five months after TikTok crossed 1.5 billion app downloads, according to the firm. It also arrives amid a global pandemic, wherein quarantined viewers are clearly flocking to the snacky and frequently family-friendly Chinese-owned micro-video platform. In Q1 of 2020, TikTok was installed more than 315 million times — which is more downloads in one quarter than any app ever, according to Sensor Tower.
The biggest driver of this growth has been India, which has generated 611 million lifetime downloads. Next is China, where TikTok is known as Douyin (196.6 million downloads), followed by the United States, where TikTok has been installed 165 million times. The app is far more prevalent on Android phones, according to Sensor Tower, where it has been downloaded 1.5 billion times (as opposed to 495.2 million downloads on iPhones).
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In terms of revenue generated by the app (TikTok offers a number of virtual items for sale), Sensor Tower estimates that users have spent $456.7 million on TikTok to date. That’s a huge leap over the $175 million that the app had clocked when it reached 1.5 billion downloads only five months ago. China generated $331 million, the U.S. generated $86.5 million, followed by Great Britain, which generated $9 million, according to Sensor Tower.
And interestingly, while Google Play accounts for most TikTok downloads, a huge majority of revenue is generated on the Apple App Store — to the tune of $435.5 million (as opposed to a mere $21.4 million on Android).
Despite its meteoric rise, TikTok has courted a huge amount of controversy, including an ongoing investigation by the U.S. government for allegedly collecting data on underage viewers, as well as censoring content in line with the aims of the Chinese government. The app has even been banned on the official phones of several government agencies, including the Army and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). In response, TikTok most recently announced that it was opening up a Transparency Center in its Los Angeles offices that will allow outside experts to examine its content moderation and data handling practices.
