TikTok, Zoom and Disney+ have the slightly dubious-sounding honor of being named the three most popular iOS apps in the United States during the age of coronavirus, a new report from app analytics platform Sensor Tower suggests.
The report, which covers the first three months of 2020, sheds light on the way our app habits are changing during the COVID-19 pandemic. In short? We’re downloading a whole lot more apps than usual. That makes the App Store one of the few businesses that’s actually thriving during an incredibly difficult time.
The report, published late last week, notes that the impact of coronavirus was higher on Apple’s App Store than it was on Google Play. The App Store’s growth hit highs of 50% to 65% above Google Play. Interestingly, app installs typically peaked about two to three weeks after a country’s 200th confirmed case of coronavirus.
Unsurprisingly, the responses differed by country, along with the individual measures of the countries to control the spread of COVID-19. China saw growth of more than 60%. South Korea, on the other hand, did not top 20%.
China experienced its highest quarter for iOS downloads since the third quarter of 2017. Apps in the business, education and games markets proved particularly popular.
In the U.S., meanwhile, download growth stood at 24.8% year-over-year, compared to the 12.7% growth recorded in the fourth quarter of 2019. America’s top app categories included news, education and business.
Photo: Sensor Tower
App Store’s Q1 2020: Games are up. So are Zoom calls.
As people tried to take their mind off the news, games unsurprisingly did brisk business. Game downloads on the App Store hit almost 3 billion in 2020’s first quarter. For the past 10 quarters, game installs hovered somewhere between 2 and 2.5 billion.
Overall, TikTok triumphed as the top App Store title in the United States of the past three months. As previously noted, Zoom also performed spectacularly. The videoconferencing app became the second most downloaded iPhone app (and the third most downloaded iPad app) of the quarter. The newly launched Disney+ video streaming service app came in third place.
You can check out Sensor Tower’s report here. (You will need to provide an email address in order to download it.)
Are there any particular apps that have dominated your time in lockdown? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
