App market in great shape. TikTok, Meta and app petrol prices at the top

The applications market opens in 2022 as it closed in 2021: growing. I’m 36.9 billion apps installed worldwide in the first three months of the year counting both the App Store and Google Play, 1.4% more than in the same period last year. The undisputed queen is TikTok with 3.5 billion downloads, followed by Instagram which, however, loses 7 percentage points. Among the publishers we should mention Meta, Google and ByteDance, first in the Top 10 and the only non-games.

NOTE: the data collected by Sensor Tower refer to the two official stores – therefore not to the third-party Android ones – and exclusively concern the downloads that took place between January 1st and March 31st 2022: multiple downloads of the same app are not counted. made from the same account, even if on different devices.

• THE MARKET IN GENERAL
• THE BEST APPS
• THE BEST GAMES
• THE BEST EDITORS
• CATEGORIES
• VILLAGES
• SOME CURIOSITIES

THE MARKET IN GENERAL

In Q1 2022 the download growth was of1.4% every year:

• 36.9 billion, of which
  • 8.6 billion on the App Store, + 2.4%
  • 28.3 billion on Play Store, + 1.1%

THE BEST APPS

TikTok marks a new record: 3.5 billion downloads, the fifth app to exceed this threshold (and the only non-Meta). Followed by Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp (all by Zuckerberg), and Telegram closes the Top 5.

App Store:

1. TikTok: 70 million. ByteDance’s CapCut is sixth (video editing)
2. YouTube
3. Whatsapp
4. Instagram
5. Facebook

Play Store:

1. Instagram
2. Facebook
3. TikTok
4. Shopee (96 million, growing fast)
5. Whatsapp

EUROPE

This is the overall situation, on the App Store and Play Store in Europe: in general, TikTok is the most downloaded app, followed by WhatsApp and Telegram. On the App Store WhatsApp is in first place, on the Play Store it is fourth – in the lead is the ByteDance app.

THE BEST GAMES

By focusing on games, Garena Free Fire is the most downloaded app in the world both in general and on the Play Store. On the App Store it is instead Subway Surfers to earn first place. Curious the second place of Wordle on the App Store: all thanks to the same name of the puzzle, with which it has nothing to do. In Europe Subway Surfers is first both at the aggregate level and for each individual store.

THE BEST EDITORS

Meta and Google take it all: they are the undisputed leaders on a global level, followed at a distance by ByteDance. On the Apple App Store, Google ranks first, followed by Chinese Tencent, Meta, ByteDance and Alibaba Group. On the Play Store Meta overtakes Google, while in third place is the Swedish Embracer Group (game publisher).

EUROPE

As for our market – the European one – Google ranks ahead of Embracer Group (second) and French Voodoo (third). Meta is fourth. On the App Store Google and Meta are first and second, Microsoft is third. The ranking on the Google Play Store is completely different, with Embracer Group (1st), Azur Interactive (2nd) and Say Games (3rd). Google is fourth, Meta eleventh.

CATEGORIES

On the App Store it is the games, up 1.8% year-on-year (2.34 billion downloads). Follow the utility (increasing), apps for entertainment (stable), those for Photo and video (down) and lo shopping (increasing). The same goes for the Google Play Store: games grow by 2.1% (12.03 billion downloads), and at a safe distance we find the other categories: tools (up sharply), entertainment (down), finance (rising sharply), social (in sharp decline).

India is the country that downloaded the most apps in the first quarter of the year, followed by the United States and Brazil. On the App Store, the United States and China are almost paired in first place with 1.92 and 1.89 billion downloads respectively, while on the Play Store India is on the top step of the podium with 6.58 billion downloads.

SOME CURIOSITIES

• With the Covid emergency eased, people have returned to travel and move. However, the Russia-Ukraine crisis has led – and is increasingly leading – towards a serious gas supply crisis. Here, then, is that the gasoline price tracking app recorded strong growth in Europe and the USA. Among these, GasBuddy.
• As mentioned above, one of the most popular app games is Wordle, which has nothing to do with the game purchased by the New York Times. Indeed, to be honest, the Wordle app dates back to 2016, and therefore well before the puzzle became super popular.

Credits opening image: Pixabay