TikTok downloads plummet 25% in July, US replaces India as top contributor

ByteDance owned video sharing social networking service TikTok, which was the most downloaded non-game app globally for July, witnessed its download numbers drop to 65.2 million for the month from 87 million in June, according to a report.

India, which made up 18.8% of TikTok’s downloads in June, was replaced by the US in July as the top contributor with a 9.7% share, as per a report by application intelligence company Sensor Tower. India is no longer on the list of top 10 countries with the most TikTok downloads. The Donald Trump-led country was followed by Indonesia, which accounted for 8.5% of the total app installs, the report said.

Read: TikTok tops non-game app downloads in May, with India as lead contributor

The fall in India numbers could be attributed to the June 29 ban of the Chinese origin app, along with 58 others, by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), citing sovereignty and integrity concerns. In the first week of July, all the banned apps were removed from Google Play, while the App Store discontinued most of them.

Read: In Brief: Govt bans 47 more Chinese apps

While Trump initially sought a ban on the app, news agency Reuters reported that the decision had to be revoked following pressure from his advisors and the Repulican party, who were concerned about losing young voters -- TikTok’s target audience. On August 6, however, the US banned transactions with parent companies of TikTok and Tencent-owned WeChat -- an order that would come into effect in 45 days, as per media reports.

TikTok’s loss in India was Snack Video’s gain. Also a Chinese company -- but not on the banned list -- short video making platform Snack Video saw its user base multiply 3.5 times from 7.8 million installs in June to 28.8 million in July. The increase also marked the app’s entry into the global top 10 most downloaded non-game application list at the eighth position.

A close second in the most downloaded non-game application globally, after TikTok, was Facebook, with more than 53.6 million installs. India accounted for 23.1% of the total downloads of the Mark Zuckerberg founded social media application.