2019’s Most Downloaded Apps
Can you name five things that you cannot live without? Chances are you named your mobile phone right up there. Your mobile phone has virtually become an integral extension of your body, like your hand or heart, for that matter. Whatever you consume be it your ordered lunch, groceries, merchandise, entertainment, or communication. It is all enabled by this one device that fits snuggly into a pocket, your smartphone.
Yet, if we ask you to tell us only one app that can run your world you will find it extremely hard to make that choice. Can you sustain only with WhatsApp? Or can you live without Facebook? What about Instagram? In theory, we all can. But the question is, do we really want to?
Did You Know?
WhatsApp is the most downloaded app of 2019. In fact, for the last four years, Facebook-owned WhatsApp had been the world’s most downloaded app according to Sensor Tower. In fact, Facebook owns four of the top five most downloaded apps according to the report. Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram are among the others on the list. TikTok, in the second place, being the other app to round out the top five. YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, Snapchat, Amazon are all in the top twenty, but aren’t really threatening to break out to the top of the charts.
Sensor Tower’s Q4 report for 2019, closely analyses the app’s life cycle, measuring longevity and relatability. The overall growth in app downloads has increased from 2018 to 2019 by 4.7%. In 2019, apps were downloaded 28.7 billion times versus about 27.4 billion in 2018. With Android commanding 87% of the smartphone operating system market share, it is no surprise that Google Play accounts for the lion’s share of app downloads.
A Story in Downloads
Among publishers, Facebook and Google dominated the app marketplace for the longest time. In fact, in Q4, Google for the first time in five years beat Facebook to the top slot with their popular apps — YouTube, Gmail, Photos, etc.
TikTok gained two spots in 2019, leapfrogging Facebook and Messenger in the process. India is its largest market, despite being banned in the country for 22 days, followed by Brazil, the United States, China, and Indonesia.
PUBG Mobile ranks first among the games with about 2.3 billion downloads in 2019. It stood second in 2018, but successfully managed to be the favourite game of the year.
What to Expect in 2020
One more app to watch out for in 2020 is Disney+. Despite having launched only in the United States in mid-November of 2019, the app reached close to 31 million downloads in a limited period. With a stated objective of launching in more markets globally, we expect this to be one of the most popular apps, giving healthy competition to Netflix and PrimeVideo in the years to come.
After years of dominating the app download market, Facebook finally took serious knocks in 2019, proving that while getting to the top is hard, staying there is harder. Last year, Google and TikTok managed to land serious blows to the world’s most popular social networking company. With Facebook seeing limited success in streaming, gaming, and payments, 2020 could be even more challenging.
