TikTok becomes most downloaded social media app in India during lockdown: Report

Unsurprisingly, TikTok was the most downloaded social media app in India during the ongoing lockdown period. TikTok managed to beat WhatsApp and Facebook again in terms of downloads, according to App Annie.

Overall, social media app downloads in India went up by 20%around the time the lockdown started as compared to January, ET reported. This data is from March 22 onwards just before the 21-day lockdown was announced on March 24. This led to over 49 million downloads on the App Store and Google Play Store combined.

TikTok was followed by WhatsApp, Facebook and Helo which is also owned by TikTok's parent company ByteDance. Globally, WhatsApp is seeing the highest surge in usage of 40% according to a report by Kantar.

TikTok has had explosive growth in the past year, and it continues to do so especially in India. The short-video app also had its best month in February in terms of downloads and revenue as it registered 113 million downloads on Android and iOS, according to Sensor Tower. India also continues to be the biggest driver of downloads for TikTok comprising 46.6 million installs globally.

Coming back to the report, App Annie also revealed other app categories that saw an increase in downloads include news apps, video conferencing and entertainment apps. Interestingly, dating apps like Tinder and Bumble did not see any jump in downloads during this lockdown period. However, Tinder did report its highest ever number of swipes crossing 3 billion on March 29 after it's Passport feature was made free for everyone. This feature lets Tinder users change their location to anywhere in the world.