The pendulum swung in 2022 with app downloads stagnating, after two years of solid growth under the pandemic. In 2023, some categories saw growth while others continued to stagnate, as users shifted...

In June 2025, ChatGPT and TikTok were the most downloaded mobile apps worldwide, with 50 million and 37 million downloads, respectively. The Meta-powered apps Instagram and Facebook followed, generating 36 million and 30 million downloads during the analyzed period. Other mobile apps such as WhatsApp, CapCut, and Temu also ranked highly.

In February 2025, the YouTube's mobile app was the most popular smartphone app in the United States, with approximately 167 million unique monthly users in the country on iOS and Android combined. Gmail followed with approximately 148 million monthly active users, while Facebook was reported having 146.6 million active users in the examined month. In the United States, the mobile internet user penetration is set to reach 92.5 percent of the population in 2029. Some of the most popular app categories on the Apple App Store are dedicated to gaming, business, or education. In July 2021, casual mobile gaming app Black Blast! was the most popular game for iPhone users, with more than 1.66 million downloads. Mobile social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, are still among the most popular social apps for mobile users in the country. However, video apps YouTube and TikTok have quickly become users' favorite social media. In June 2021, the popular short-video app TikTok was counting more than 6.5 million downloads from iOS users in the United States during the last quarter of 2023.

In 2024, TikTok was still the most downloaded mobile app worldwide. The short-video sharing app generated 825.5 million downloads during the same year. The social video app Instagram followed with 817 million downloads. Fast-fashion app Temu ranked in fifth, with over 516 million downloads for global users in the last examined year, while ByteDance-published video editing app CapCut had around 410 million downloads. TikTok Owned by the Beijing-based tech company ByteDance and launched in 2017, TikTok quickly gained popularity after the acquisition of Musical.ly in 2018. In 2025, the number of TikTok users worldwide was expected to exceed 955 million, with the United States being one of the leading markets. In 2024, TikTok engaged the largest audience from Indonesia, with over 157 million consumers from the region using the app. United States, and Brazil followed with 120.5 and 105.2 users, respectively. Meta Platforms In October 2021, Facebook was renamed and rebranded as Meta, with the CEO Mark Zuckerberg aiming to be associated with the metaverse. Meta’s products include Facebook, Messager, Instagram, and WhatsApp, also known as Meta’s Family of Apps (FoA), generating most of Meta’s revenue. Moreover, these are among the most popular social networks worldwide. As part of its rebranding, Meta’s Reality Labs business segment develops a series of virtual reality (VR) headsets, the Meta Quest - one of the leading VR devices on the market.

Between 2021 and the end of 2023, China was the leading country for app downloads by far. In 2023, mobile apps in China saw approximately 113 billion downloads from users in the country. Mobile apps in India reached 26 billion downloads during the same year, while users in the United States generated approximately 12.6 billion downloads. In recent years, mobile apps downloads have been experiencing a positive growth trend in the majority of the examined countries.

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In February 2025, the YouTube mobile app ranked first with a 76 percent audience reach, while e-mail platform service Gmail was accessed by 68 percent of mobile audiences in the United States. Social media platform Facebook ranked third with a usage reach of 67 percent. Social video app TikTok reported a reach of approximately 40 percent in the examine period. TikTok in the U.S. The social media ecosystem continues to evolve rapidly. While Facebook remains a dominant force with over three billion monthly active users across its family of apps, newcomers like TikTok are reshaping user engagement. TikTok's global popularity is evident in its 186 million worldwide downloads in Q4 2024. TikTok's popularity extends beyond entertainment, with 64 percent of Gen Z users in the U.S. utilizing it as an online search engine in 2024. This trend underscores the platform's expanding role in information discovery, particularly among younger demographics. However, TikTok's success is not without controversy. Nearly 40 percent of U.S. users believed the Chinese government is using it to bring social and political divisions. OTT video apps in the U.S. While television remains the primary device for media consumption across all age groups, a clear generational divide is emerging. Younger audiences, particularly those aged 18 to 34, are turning to smartphones as their preferred entertainment device. This shift aligns with broader trends in digital media consumption. During the first half of 2024, entertainment apps were leading in mobile revenue generation, with U.S. consumers spending over 2.65 billion U.S. dollars on these apps.

Mobile games make up the majority of video games released each year, with thousands of new additions to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store every year. By the mid-2010s, mobile games had...

The amount of Android apps available for download is constantly increasing, exerting a continuous pressure on developers to publish outstanding apps. Google Play (GP) is the default distribution channel for Android apps, which provides mobile app users with metrics to identify and report apps quality such as rating, amount of downloads, previous users comments, etc. In addition to those metrics, GP presents a set of top charts that highlight the outstanding apps in different categories. Both metrics and top app charts help developers to identify whether their development decisions are well valued by the community. Therefore, app presence in these top charts is a valuable information when understanding the features of top-apps. In this paper we present Hall-of-Apps, a dataset containing top charts' apps metadata extracted (weekly) from GP, for 4 different countries, during 30 weeks. The data is presented as (i) raw HTML files, (ii) a MongoDB database with all the information contained in app's HTML files (e.g., app description, category, general rating, etc.), and (iii) data visualizations built with the D3.js framework. A first characterization of the data along with the urls to retrieve it can be found in our online appendix: https://thesoftwaredesignlab.github.io/hall-of-apps-tools/

As of February 2022, Tinder was the leading dating app in the United States and selected European countries, making up a share of **** percent downloads in the dating app category. Bumble followed, accounting for ** percent of all dating app downloads between August 2021 and February 2022. Badoo, which was the second most downloaded dating app worldwide, came in third with approximately ** percent of all dating app downloads in the examined countries.

As of February 2025, two billion users were accessing the WhatsApp messenger on a monthly basis. The app’s reach in usage penetration is particularly strong in markets outside the United States, and it is one of the most popular mobile social apps worldwide. WeChat amassed over 1.38 billion users, and Facebook Messenger amassed around 947 million users worldwide. Instant messaging is a type of online chat which offers real-time text transmission via internet. Since the appearance of the smartphone and the subsequent explosion of mobile apps, low-cost or free chat and social messaging apps have proven themselves as a cheap alternative to operator-based text messaging via SMS. Many messenger apps offer features such as group chats, the exchange of graphics, video and even audio messages as well as stickers or emoticons.

In 2022, Shopee was the most downloaded free shopping application in Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. The Shopee 2.2 app had over ***** million downloads in Indonesia in 2022. In Thailand, Lazada was the most downloaded shopping app with over ***** million downloads in 2022. Online shopping in Southeast Asia A recent study on consumer behavior in Southeast Asia revealed that over ** percent of consumers in the region had purchased fashion and personal care items online. Just under half of the respondents used online shopping to buy groceries. The online grocery market in SEA has grown significantly in recent years and was forecast to reach **** billion U.S. dollars by 2026. Online shopping in APAC In the Asia-Pacific region, Thailand had the highest share of the population that made weekly online purchases. In contrast, less than **** of the Japanese population made online purchases weekly. When making online purchase decisions, family members and social media influencers had the most influence over purchasing decisions made by APAC consumers.

With over **** million monthly downloads in April 2025, ****** is the most downloaded dating application in the world. First released in April 2012, the American company introduced the swiping model, with people anonymously indicating who they are interested in meeting and getting to know better. FRND and Bumble ranked second and third, respectively. What apps do dating users download? In June 2024, ****** was the leading dating apps by revenue. The company generated a monthly in-app-purchase revenue of more than ** million U.S. dollars. Bumble ranked second with over ** million U.S. dollars, followed by Hinge with roughly **** million U.S. dollars in the last examined month. Online dating platforms in the United States In 2024, the number of online dating users in the United States was estimated to have surpassed ** million. According to a survey of dating app users conducted in the U.S. in July 2022, almost half of women in the country joined online dating services to meet a long term partner, while ** percent of men did the same to find a casual date.

In May 2025, Tencent’s super app WeChat remained the most popular mobile app in China with around **** billion monthly active users (MAUs). Its older instant messaging sibling QQ climbed to second, with about *** million MAUs. Messaging, e-commerce, utility, and video streaming apps occupied the most spots in the top 20 list. What makes WeChat so attractive to users? WeChat is a multi-functional app beyond messaging and social networking. From mobile payment and taxi-hailing to making appointments and holiday planning, it provides almost everything to every mobile user in China. WeChat users are from various age groups from teenagers to old adults. In general, most WeChat users spent at least ** minutes per day on the app. In fact, many companies also use this "super app" to advertise their brands, and its business version Wecom to communicate internally. The promising future of short video apps The rise of short video entertainment is another important trend in the world’s second most populous country, especially in rural regions. ByteDance’s Douyin, which TikTok was cloned from, is one of the key players in the Chinese short video arena. Founded in 2016, Douyin had overtaken its imminent rival Kuaishou (Kwai) as China’s top short video app within 4 years. As the demand for rural life live streaming has been accelerating, industry experts expected that Chinese short form video market would continue to grow to reach a total revenue of *** billion yuan by 2024.

As of August 14, 2025, ByteDance's flagship product TikTok had amassed over ******billion global downloads since its release in 2016. The Chinese company owns *** apps that operate in ** countries across the world. TikTok’s unstoppable popularity TikTok currently enjoys almost *** billion global audiences, with a ***** living in Indonesia, the United States, Brazil, and Mexico. There was little effect with the TikTok bans from the European Union and a few other countries, barely slowing the short video app’s global expansion. The global mobile app download figures in March 2024 highlighted Facebook and Instagram as the only rivals against the Gen Z’s digital darling. ByteDance’s other gems CapCut, a video editor that complements TikTok, is ByteDance’s second beloved application. It was the only tool app that cracked the top ten most downloaded mobile apps in 2024. The app’s recent artificial intelligence capabilities have cemented its role in content creation among other leading AI tools. Other prominent apps from ByteDance are ******* (China's most popular news and information app), *********** (a video-sharing site), and ***** (a beauty camera and photo editor).

Market leader Facebook was the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently sits at more than three billion monthly active users. Meta Platforms owns four of the biggest social media platforms, all with more than one billion monthly active users each: Facebook (core platform), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. In the third quarter of 2023, Facebook reported around four billion monthly core Family product users. The United States and China account for the most high-profile social platforms Most top ranked social networks with more than 100 million users originated in the United States, but services like Chinese social networks WeChat, QQ or video sharing app Douyin have also garnered mainstream appeal in their respective regions due to local context and content. Douyin’s popularity has led to the platform releasing an international version of its network: a little app called TikTok. How many people use social media? The leading social networks are usually available in multiple languages and enable users to connect with friends or people across geographical, political, or economic borders. In 2025, social networking sites are estimated to reach 5.42 billion users and these figures are still expected to grow as mobile device usage and mobile social networks increasingly gain traction in previously underserved markets.

The Google Maps mobile app reported the highest number of downloads worldwide among the selected travel apps in 2024. That year, this app recorded nearly *** million aggregated downloads on iOS and Google Play. The Uber app was the second most downloaded app in the ranking, with almost *** million downloads. The online travel agency app market Focusing on the online travel agency (OTA) market, Airbnb topped the ranking of the OTA apps with the highest number of downloads worldwide in 2024, ahead of Booking.com. When looking at the number of downloads of leading OTA apps in the U.S. that year, Airbnb recorded again the highest figure, while Expedia ranked second in that case. How big is the travel app market? In 2023, the travel app market's global revenue reached nearly *** billion U.S. dollars and was forecast to increase steadily over the following years. When breaking down the global travel app market's revenue by country, the United States and China ranked by far as the biggest players that year, generating around *** million and *** million U.S. dollars, respectively.

During a survey, it was found that the Albert Heijn app was the most popular supermarket app among consumers from the Netherlands to look for offers. It was used by ** percent of respondents from that country. Lidl had the app most used for that purpose in ** out of the ** surveyed countries.

As of April 2025, the biggest share of Grindr app downloads came from the United States, accounting for over 18 million of the total. Of the ten leading countries, India and Brazil ranked second and third, with approximately 11 million and 10.3 million downloads each.