In 2022, TikTok was the most downloaded mobile app worldwide. The short-video sharing app generated 672 million downloads during the same year. The mobile apps of social media and communication platforms Instagram and WhatsApp followed with 548 million and 424 million downloads, respectively. The cloud-based instant messaging service Telegram had 310 million downloads from global users in 2022.
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 2023, the number of TikTok users worldwide was expected to exceed 834 million, with the United States being one of the leading markets. In September 2022, TikTok was the most-downloaded app in the Google Play Store and the second-most downloaded app in the Apple App Store, following BeReal.
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.
