TikTok has cemented itself at the top of the App Store for yet another month, showing the seemingly unassailable dominance of the video-sharing app. According to app analytics platform Sensor Tower, TikTok was the top-grossing, non-gaming app worldwide for February 2021.
For the month, it raked in more than $110 million in user spending across both iOS and Android. That’s approaching twice what it earned in revenue that month last year, although marginally down from the $128 million it pulled in back in January.
While TikTok only appeared in tenth place on Google Play’s top apps, the fact that users spend significantly more on iOS than Android was enough to push it to the top of both combined app stores in terms of earning. On iOS, TikTok was followed by fellow video sharing app YouTube in second place.
Most of TikTok’s earnings come from China where the app is called Douyin. China makes up around 79% of total revenue. The United States is in second place with 8%. Overall, YouTube proved a slightly higher earner in the U.S. Overall, across both iOS and Google Play, it made more than $82 million in gross revenue for the month. Half of that was from the States.
February and beyond: TikTok’s dominance
TikTok has dominated the App Store for much of the past year. From April 2020 it remained No. 1 for every month except August. That’s when it was briefly overtaken by YouTube.
Don’t expect things to slow down any time soon, either. The biggest question mark over TikTok — at least in the U.S. — was based on former President Trump’s threat to ban TikTok in the country. Under President Biden, that threat now appears to have subsided. This, in turn, likely means a bit more stability in TikTok’s future.
As with any app that appeals primarily to younger users (teens are the largest demographic of users), there’s still an inherent uncertainty that TikTok couldn’t be superseded by the next hot app. But, based on any metric I’ve seen, that looks extremely unlikely to happen any time soon.
Source: Sensor Tower
