It surpassed the likes of Facebook and Whatsapp with more than 3 billion downloads per year.

TikTok has officially surpassed almost all other apps on the Google Play Store. Now, the short-form video platform is the most downloaded app for 2020 and 2021 so far. It has thus beaten the likes of Facebook and Whatsapp – two apps who have held the number 1 spot for many months prior to TikTok’s reign.

This milestone means that TikTok is now the fifth non-gaming app to cross the 3 billion and more download mark in a given year. It is interesting to note that the only other apps that have reached this level of success are all owned by Facebook and include Instagram and Messenger.

According to reports, the growth TikTok is experiencing is also not slowing down. In the first half of 2020, the app saw 619 million first time installs and although that dropped some 38% in the first half of 2021, probably because the app was removed from Indian app stores, the report by Sensor Tower found.

TikTok is one of 16 apps to see $1+ billion in gross revenue since January 2014. More surprisingly, out of that list, only 5 apps reached $2.5 billion and naturally, TikTok is on that list too.

Other social media app developers have been critical of these milestones and argued that TikTok has copied some of their functionality. Certainly, social media apps seem to “borrow” ideas from each other. There is no denying, however, that TikTok’s upward trend is visible is everyday life with more users (and brands!) joining the video community.