Originally TikTok was launched in China by mobile developer ByteDance (on September of 2016) as a short-form video sharing platform. TikTok reported over 1 billion active monthly users last September, less than five years after its launch! Thanks to TikTok, ByteDance is one of Chinese tech’s biggest global success stories. Here are some recent key statistics regarding TikTok and how it compares to other social media apps.
Mansoor Iqbal for Business of Apps:
While many Chinese apps have failed to succeed outside of China, most notably Tencent’s WeChat, TikTok managed to push itself into the overseas market through the acquisition of Musical.ly in November 2017 for $1 billion. This added 80 million users, mostly in the US, which TikTok then imported to its own platform.
From there, TikTok snowballed into the most popular app in 2019 and 2020. It was downloaded 693 million times in 2019 and 850 million times in 2020. Even though it only launched in 2017, TikTok was the seventh-most downloaded app of the 2010s, and looks to be a true competitor against Facebook’s grip on social networking in the West.
Even with this stellar growth, TikTok has faced several controversies. In 2019, India and Pakistan banned it for “morality issues”, with both bans being rescinded after a while. India banned the app again in June 2020, along with a spate of other Chinese-based apps, as tensions between China and India heightened.
TikTok key statistics
– TikTok generated an estimated $1.9 billion revenue in 2020, a 457% increase year-on-year
– TikTok had 837 million monthly active users in Q2 2020 and is expected to reach 1 billion by Q4 2020
– In China, TikTok is accessed by over 600 million users daily
– TikTok has been downloaded over three billion times
TikTok FAQ
What is TikTok’s global internet penetration?
TikTok is used by 18% of global internet users aged 16 to 64 (GlobalWebIndex)
What countries is TikTok most popular in?
Outside of China, TikTok’s largest markets are the US, Indonesia and Brazil
How many users did TikTok have in India before it was banned?
TikTok had 190 million users in India, making it the app’s second largest market behind China
How many times has TikTok been downloaded?
TikTok reached 3 billion downloads in June 2021. It was the seventh-most downloaded app of the 2010s
What is TikTok’s peak quarterly downloads?
TikTok had 315 million downloads in Q1 2020, which is a record for quarterly downloads not including Chinese third-party app stores (SensorTower)
What is TikTok’s rating?
TikTok was the most positively reviewed app in the US in 2020, with 88% positive reviews (SensorTower)
How many marketers plan to use TikTok?
14% of marketers plan to up their spend in 2021 (HubSpot), however only 3% see it as the most effective social media channel (CivicScience)
What is TikTok’s valuation?
TikTok was valued at $50 billion by investors in 2020 (Reuters)
What is ByteDance’s valuation?
ByteDance was last valued at $180 billion, however trading in private markets has exceeded $350 billion (SCMP)
ByteDance had previous experience running mobile apps, as the operator of AI-powered Chinese news aggregation platform Toutiao. Zhang Yiming, the founder and CEO of ByteDance, incorporated a similar AI-platform into TikTok, which is able to identify a user’s interests and feed them more relevant videos. This was one of the keys to the growth of TikTok in the United States, Indonesia, Brazil and other countries.
