We netizens have truly embraced the digital shift. These days, we associate ourselves with words like ‘digital’ and ‘smart’ more than ever.
With ease of access almost everywhere, we can’t really ignore the world that predominantly exists in our phones. With a myriad of apps at our disposal, the way we go about our day to day lives is mostly with a tap or swipe.
And in today’s day and age, the influence of social media can’t possibly be ignored. There are a multitude of social media platforms. But some garner so much hype, they grow so massively and go viral that sometimes we can’t really comprehend, why?
Yes, we are talking about TikTok. For GenZ, TikTok is an entirely new subculture. If you are someone from GenZ, you either love TikTok to the point that you are going ‘cray-cray’ or you feel it’s a whole new world of cringe. There’s absolutely no in-between.
Regardless of whether you find TikTok funny or cringey, this social media app already has half a billion active users and it is really addictive. Going down a rabbit hole of endless lip-sync videos and viral challenges is so easy. Yes, we all have been there!.
But, if you are somehow unaware of TikTok’s skyrocketing popularity, you should definitely take notes about this upstart social network. This social video sharing app has easy-to-consume content that millions of people watch everyday, and is every marketer’s dream.
What is TikTok?
TikTok is one of the world’s fastest growing social media platforms. The app allows users to create lip-sync videos, re-enact their favorite scenes from movies with filters, music and an array of features.
TikTok hit the market in September 2017.
Initially launched as Douyin in China in September 2016, the app is owned by Beijing based tech-company Byte Dance. TikTok uses the same software as Douyin and was released a year later.
While TikTok has a multitude of videos, the most common ones on the platform are lip-syncing videos. If you are wondering if TikTok is the first lip-syncing app, it is not.
Much before TikTok, came Musical.ly. Musical.ly was launched by Chinese entrepreneurs Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang in 2014.
In late 2017, TikTok’s parent company Byte Dance acquired Musical.ly for around $1 billion. TikTok is essentially the second iteration of Musical.ly. In August 2018, all accounts on Musical.ly were migrated to TikTok, which marked the beginning of TikTok’s success story.
TikTok and Doyuin use the same software but they maintain separate networks in order to comply with the Chinese censorship restrictions. TikTok is available on the App Store and Google Play store and has racked up millions of downloads globally.
Here, we have carefully curated some TikTok statistics for 2020 that you simply shouldn’t ignore.
Top 12 TikTok statistics for 2020
1. Over 500 million active users worldwide
Launched in September 2016, TikTok has garnered a huge audience globally in a really short span. The multi-faceted, immersive app that is available on both Android and iOS has ruled out its dominance among millions of users worldwide.
As per the latest TikTok statistics, in recent months, a number of videos have gone viral beyond the app, racking up millions of views on Twitter and Instagram. It’s safe to say that TikTok has skyrocketed in popularity.
TikTok has over 500 million active users worldwide. Infact as per a leaked October 2019 advertising pitch, TikTok reports having 800 million active monthly users worldwide.(Source)
TikTok has been welcomed enthusiastically, especially by Asian countries such as Cambodia, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Today, TikTok is even more popular than Twitter (330 million monthly active users), Snapchat (294 million monthly active users) and Reddit (330 million monthly active users).
When you compare the journeys, it took Instagram almost six years to gain the same amount of monthly active users that TikTok garnered in just three years. Whereas, for Facebook to gain the same amount of monthly active users, it took over four years.
A majority of the growth of Tiktok can be contributed to the merger between ByteDance and Musical.ly. This move by the parent company gave TikTok easy access to US teenage user demographic that Musical.ly had previously captured.
It is interesting to note that in China alone there are 150 million active daily users, which use the Chinese version of the app Doyuin.
2. TikTok has been downloaded a whopping 1.5 billion times
The download statistics for TikTok are highly impressive. TikTok is by far one of the most downloaded apps in the world in recent years. The total number of downloads of the TikTok app reached both 1 billion and 1.5 billion on the App Store and Google Play in 2019. (Source)
466 million of these downloads come from India, 173 million are from China whereas 123 million downloads are from the U.S.
The app hit its first billion in Feb 2019 and took only under eight months to hit half a billion more downloads which is astounding.
TikTok’s latest statistics show that the app was downloaded 614 million times in 2019 from January to November making it the third most popular non-gaming mobile app, ahead of social media giants such as Facebook and Instagram.
Given its relatively recent release in 2016, TikTok made its way into the list of the ten most-downloaded apps for the past decade, ranking seventh, much ahead of even YouTube and Twitter.
3. Monthly active users in the United States
If you take into account the TikTok monthly active users in the U.S., it hit the 26.5 million mark. Due to the staggering growth that followed, it is estimated that the current number of monthly active TikTok users in the U.S. is about 60 million.
Over the past few years, the number of U.S. adults using TikTok has been on the rise fairly consistently.
TikTok user statistics show that at the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2017, there were 2.6 million US adult TikTok users. Just twelve months later, that’s almost tripled to 7.2 million. TikTok use among US adults increased exponentially since September 2018 –doubling and hitting 14.3 million in just a span of six months.
The number of US adult TikTok users has grown 5.5 times over in less than 18 months.60% of TikTok’s monthly active users in the U.S. are aged between 16-24.
4. TikTok is the most downloaded app on the App Store
TikTok was the world’s most downloaded non-game application in the Apple app store, reaching 45.8 million downloads in the first quarter of 2018.
As of Q1 2019, with 33 million downloads in a single quarter, TikTok is the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store. (Source) The app leaves behind YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, rounding out the top five.
TikTok global downloads also surpassed the one billion mark on the App Store and Google Play, as further evidence of the recent growing popularity of the application. (Source)
Recently, Jimmy Fallon promoted a number of TikTok challenges on his late-night Talk show which encouraged viewers and resulted in a huge spike in downloads.
This is the fifth consecutive quarter of TikTok as the most commonly downloaded app on the Apple Store, which implies that TikTok is not only maintaining its strong current user base, but it is also constantly evolving to attract new users.
5. 41% of TikTok users are 16-24 year olds
If you foray into TikTok, you are likely to fall down a rabbit hole of popular 50-60 second videos. TikTok is an extremely fast-paced app. Once you log in, you will instantly find a video at the top of your feed that is curated algorithmically around your interests. If you don’t love what you see, you can proceed to swipe in an upward direction to see more videos instantly.
TikTok has created a lot of hype among the teens of the world. If we see the TikTok age demographics, the majority of active users are aged 16 to 24. It is so easy to get lost in the endless stream of videos- you can passively browse TikTok – scroll and watch other users’ content without even contributing.
The creators of TikTok targeted the younger generation since the very start. By knowing full well the habits and preferences of their target audience, they created an app that gives their audience exactly what they are looking for.
TikTok provides a platform to teens of the world to express themselves creatively. 66 percent of worldwide users are under the age of 30. In the U.S., 60 percent of TikTok’s monthly active users are 16 to 24-year-olds, and 52 percent of them are iPhone users.
6. India is the fastest- growing TikTok market with 467 million downloads
The creators of TikTok are fully aware of it’s growing popularity especially in the South Asian countries. The user base of TikTok is exponentially growing in the Asian market and India.
Even with a temporary ban in India in early 2019, the Indian market has continued to surpass China,TikTok’s country of origin. To date, a quarter of TikTok’s downloads and over 40 percent of new users are from India.
Out of the total number of TikTok downloads so far, India accounts for 466.8 million (or 31 percent), which is more than double China’s 173.2 million downloads. (Source)
In 2019 alone, TikTok stats report that India was responsible for 277.6 million downloads, which account for nearly half ,(45 percent) of all-year download numbers. In 2019, six of every ten downloads of the TikTok application happened in India.
India and China together account for more than 40 percent of the total number of TikTok app downloads.
The app currently supports 15 Indian languages and is promoting itself in the country through the recent launch of its education programme.
7. Average time spent on TikTok daily
TikTok users love the application. It is evident from the fact that they spend an average of 52 minutes daily on the platform. (Source) Nearly 30% of the users open the app every day, often multiple times a day.
While almost 70% of the users spend their time watching videos, over 50% use the platform to upload their own videos.
TikTok ranks very high among other social media platforms, at an average of 52 minutes spent on the application per day. People spend almost the same amount of time on Instagram (53 minutes), while on Snapchat they spend somewhere around 49.5 minutes. Facebook takes the lead with users spending an average of 58.5 minutes each day on the app.
All of this can be a big deal for advertisers. That’s because the more time people spend on apps, the greater their chance of seeing advertisements. Infact, the majority of TikTok’s income comes from advertising.
Advertising on TikTok can send users to your website, an app page in the App store, or promote your ‘hashtag challenge’ on the application.
ByteDance also stated that the U.S. users open the app eight times a day and TikTok average engagement rate stands at 4.9 seconds which is the longest. TikTok engagement vs other social apps are comparatively low – Instagram (3.1 minutes), Facebook (4.7 minutes), and Snapchat (1.6 minutes)
8. TikTok is available in 155 countries
TikTok is available for use in over 155 countries and in 75 different languages. About 150 million of these users use the Douyin app which is the Chinese version, but the users in Asian market and in India are growing exponentially.
TikTok stats demonstrate that for marketers there is a ton of potential. The graph depicts the number of downloads made by TikTok users by country. The app offers a great opportunity to target markets in 155 different countries.
TikTok is essentially a platform for creating content. While the plethora of videos available, may be stupid or funny, they are all based on content creation in one way or another. TikTok usage statistics by country directly hints that if you can come up with enthralling challenges, you can easily attract millions of new users overnight.
As a social media app development company, we feel that the TikTok statistics 2020 directly hint at the numerous business and marketing opportunities.
9. 90% of TikTok users use the app multiple times daily
It doesn’t come as a surprise that TikTok users love the app. Users are extremely active on TikTok. 90 percent of all TikTok users access the app multiple times a day on a daily basis. (Source)
With a plethora of videos available, users can passively browse, scroll and watch other users’ content on the app without even contributing.
Watching and posting preferences on TikTok tend to vary, with the former a clear preference among the users. Users open the app 8 times a day and TikTok claims that the average session is nearly 5 minutes.
10. TiKTok has e-commerce capabilities
The in-app shopping feature of TikTok is called “Hashtag Challenge Plus” and it allows users to browse products associated with a sponsored hashtag without leaving the platform. (Source)
While this feature is basically a smaller-mobile optimized version of an e-com website, it helps to spread awareness of the product, simultaneously reminding Gen Z’s of the online presence of the brand. The feature is rolled out to enhance the in-app experience for users.
With TikTok’s recently launched e-commerce capabilities, you can garner a lot more exposure and hype around your brand tagline and products.
11. More than 1 million videos viewed everyday in 2019
TikTok already hit the milestone of 1 million views per day within a year of its launch. TikTok has exploded in popularity and has wide users by country. It has truly brought a revolution in the entertainment world.
As for the average number of videos viewed on TikTok, more than 1 million videos were viewed every day in a year.
12. TikTok’s revenue skyrocketed over 300%
Back in 2018, TikTok made $3.5 million on in-app purchases from users. This year TikTok saw its in-app purchase revenue rise 310% on a year-over-year basis. (Source). TikTok revenue and usage statistics are nothing short of impressive.
While the majority of TikTok’s revenue comes from ads, according to the latest TikTok stats, the contribution of user in-app purchases to revenue is impressive. As per the TikTok revenue statistics of October 2019 Google Play and App Store users spent $18.2 million on the application.
Users buy filters and effects to make their content more interesting. Despite not being the largest market in terms of the number of users, U.S. accounts for the majority of purchases related to in-app and advertisements.
If you have been wondering how does much it cost to make an app like Tiktok or simply the cost of video creation and sharing app, irrespective of TikTok features, we have got you covered.. Our mobile app developers have broken down all the necessary features, and provided an in-depth guide on what it takes to build the next big thing.
Conclusion
Part of the reason why TikTok managed to create such a hype is because it’s more of an entertainment platform than just being another social media application. The creators of the app were extremely clear about their target audience from the very start. They built an attractive platform that provides each user the chance to be a content creator. The simplicity of using the app and its wider reach makes it appealing to a number of content creators around the world.
Rounding off TikTok statistics 2020, we conclude that the application not only presents a great business opportunity, but it also ideal platform for marketers to target markets in 155 different countries.
[Also Read: How Much Does Video Creation & Sharing App Development Cost]
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