SensorTower, a company specializing in the app economy, unveiled its quarterly report on the most downloaded applications in the world. To everyone’s surprise, Instagram slipped past TikTok to pole position in the rankings for the last quarter of 2021, running from October to December. The social network can thank India for this feat.
Instagram capitalizes on TikTok ban in India
Instagram has thus nestled in first place among the most downloaded applications in the world, ahead of TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram. The social network thus signed its best quarter since 2014, and saw its downloads increase by 10% compared to the third quarter of 2021. It owes, in large part, this ranking to India. Indeed, if we take a closer look at the report, it is evident that it is on Android that Instagram has stood out from TikTok, and more particularly in the South Asian country.
Telegram could be banned in Germany
Instagram downloads there have been on the rise since the summer of 2020. At the time, a conflict on the Indo-Chinese border, which caused the death of twenty people on the Indian side, prompted the country’s authorities to ban TikTok which had 200 million users there, a decision that still stands today. Instagram then jumped at the chance to roll out Reels, its TikTok clone, in the country. And the least we can say is that the bet is successful.
For example, in Q2 2020, about 21% of Instagram downloads came from India, and that share increased to 39% in Q4 2021. Looking at the totals for the entire year, around 25% of Instagram’s downloads came from India in 2020, a figure that then rose to around 36% in 2021.
Over the year, TikTok remains the most downloaded application in the world. Illustration: Eyestetix Studio / Unsplash
This does not mean that TikTok is less efficient
This is a rare enough fact to be noted: it is only the second time in two years that TikTok does not appear in first place in this ranking. The last time this happened, Zoom passed the Chinese app in the second quarter of 2020, as many countries went into lockdown during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, if only downloads via the App Store for the fourth quarter of 2021 are taken into account, TikTok wins the ranking hands down. Over the entire year, the social network remains the most downloaded application in the world, ahead of Facebook, then Instagram. This confirms the incredible good health of TikTok, which continues to enjoy resounding success: preferred by American teenagers to Instagram, the application generates more traffic than all of Google’s services combined.
Meta must bet on the Indian market
Instagram’s success in India is also a very promising sign for Meta. With a population of 1.4 billion people, the country, whose tech sector is still emerging, offers a highly coveted market. Through Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg’s firm can thus implement its various offers and products in the constantly evolving country, and thus consolidate its presence there.
While Reels is a hugely popular feature in India, Instagram has yet to release figures on their audiences in the West. With the figures provided by SensorTower, however, it seems clear that, despite the success of the Instagram application itself, the short video format is much more popular via TikTok.