This Week in Apps - TikTok Ban?

This Week in Apps is a short, no-fluff, round-up of interesting things that happened in the mobile industry. Here are our top highlights.

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U.S. Revenue Index (30 Day)

Insights

1. How Much Will Creators Lose if TikTok is Banned?

The clock is ticking for TikTok, which is a short week away from getting banned in the US. It's now up to the Supreme Court to decide, and no one seems eager to blink: TikTok claims it won’t sell and will shut down, and Washington wants it gone.

But there's one group no one's talking about, and they're going to get hurt the most - creators.

According to Appfigures Intelligence, TikTok creators have earned nearly half a billion dollars from TikTok's US users in 2024. And that's after Apple's and TikTok's fees.

TikTok has been the target of a ban order so many times in the last few years and always made it out alive, but this time could be different.

TikTok uses in-app purchases to sell coins which enable TikTok users to reward creators on the platform. The creators can then turn those coins into actual money while giving TikTok a share. So when a user makes an in-app purchase, they're really paying three groups: The creator, TikTok, and... the store.

TikTok is the highest-earning app in the world, so as you may imagine, all three groups are pretty happy every month.

Just how happy? Our App Intelligence shows TikTok's US users bought $144M worth of coins in December (aka gross revenue). I'm focusing in on the US here because that's what's at stake.

Of that total, Apple and Google take 30%, which adds up to around $43M, while TikTok splits what's left with the creators. That's what I was able to see in my research (please let me know if it's different). That means creators got roughly $51M and TikTok kept $51M in December from its US users.

Just US users.

For context, ChatGPT which is growing like wildfire, earned $41M in net revenue in December, according to our estimates. Less than what Apple and Google made in fees!

Looking at all of 2024, Apple and Google kept $417M of TikTok's $1.4B estimated haul. That's enough money to buy every Brooklyn resident a pair of Apple AirPods. Creators, and TikTok, each kept a smidge under a half billion.

This is a lot of money, so I wouldn't be surprised with we see a last-minute surprise.

2. The Dust Has Settled and Bluesky Still Has an Elon Problem...

Bluesky, the social media platform that managed to accomplish what others before it tried and failed - become the alternative to X - has a big problem. An Elon Musk shaped problem that I've talked about a few times in the last few months.

Some disagree, but it's pretty clear that Bluesky's growth follows Elon Musk's behavior. When Elon misbehaves, people try Bluesky, and when he's quiet, people don't.

It's not a terrible problem to have, but it makes it hard to get the traction it needs to see sustained growth.

Let me show you what I mean in terms of app downloads and web traffic. Yes, I've ventured out to the web for this!

Bluesky has seen a few all-time highs this year. The first came in September when X was banned in Brazil after Elon refused to comply with the government. The next came in October as Elon changed how blocking works, and the most recent - and by far biggest - came around election time.

But... that's all done now. Our estimates show weekly downloads dropping from an all-time high of 2.4M in mid-November to just 209K in the last week of December. That's a whole order of magnitude, or a 10x reduction.

Web traffic, which was provided to Appfigures by our friends at Semrush, seems to align with a peak in mid-November and a drop right after. A much higher peak of nearly 50M estimated users in a single week dropping to a smidge under 30M in the last week of December. Not as big of a drop as downloads, but still significant.

It's worth noting that X also saw a boost in web traffic around election time with weekly views growing to 1.8B, according to Semrush data

And in case you need any more data on this, stats collected directly from Bluesky's API agree, showing likes, posts, and follows peaked in mid-November and have dropped since.

I said a long time ago that web traffic = readers while mobile users = writers, and while that's a very rough generalization, it does fit with data collected from Bluesky's API showing a little more than 800K posters - a number which has been fairly consistent after hitting peak in mid-November.

And why is that? Because Elon hasn't done anything egregious. He's still posting a lot on X, but he and the platform itself haven't done much to alienate users.

I don't mean to be hard on Bluesky here at all. I'm on Bluesky (follow me) and think having more options is always better. I just hope the platform can start getting growth in a way that's more self-sustaining.

3. Mark is Just Trying to Keep Facebook Relevant...

Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that Facebook will be switching to community moderation of posts instead of handling that in-house using a system like X's Community Notes.

Many believe this is a political move, and while it might be a part of it, there's another important side to this - demand. And the truth is, demand for Facebook hasn't grown in several years. It's worse, demand has dropped substantially, losing Facebook hundreds of millions of potential users.

Let's have a look at the numbers and you'll see what I mean.

In 2017, which feels like multiple lifetimes ago, Facebook's app saw 601M new downloads, according to our estimates. That's more than a half billion new downloads, not redownloads, in a single year!

Things got even better in 2018 as downloads rose to 630M. Downloads fluctuated a little, but then 2021 hit and things just weren't the same.

Facebook had its biggest drop in downloads and I imagine several alarms were going off in Meta headquarters. Our estimates show downloads dropped by more than 100M to 488M for the year.

Yes, Facebook lost in one year what most apps won't see in their lifetime. That's not good.

2022 wasn't much better with downloads remaining fairly constant. And that's a good thing because by 2023 downloads were even lower, almost dropping below 400M.

In just a few short years Facebook lost hundreds of millions of eyeballs that won't view ads. That has to hurt the bottom line.

2024 was a bit better. Downloads rose to $513M, which is higher than the last few years but still a lot smaller than 2017/18.

So maybe changing Facebook's moderation practices is just a political move, or, maybe it's Mark trying to undo whatever caused the big downloads drop, which I see as a proxy for relevance. Especially now that a ban on TikTok is in sight and those users will need an alternative.

4. Back in the Billions - The Highest Earning Apps in December

It's 2025, which means we have data to size up December - arguably the best month for many different types of apps and games. And a big month it was!

The increase was felt across the board. Every app in our top 10 list saw more revenue in December.

After ranking all apps by their net revenue (what they keep after store fees) it was TikTok that took the crown. The app might get banned in the US next week, but that hasn't stopped the short-video platform from growing to a whopping $336M of net revenue.

That's the most TikTok has ever earned in a single month. How ironic...

YouTube came in second with $136m of estimated net revenue in December. When rounding, that total looks exactly like November's but really it's a few dollars higher. But but, YouTube is the only app that didn't grow by a large amount. Subscription increases are probably coming.

Disney+, Tinder, and Max round out the top 5 highest earners in December - the same set we saw last month, but with about $60M more in their bottom lines.

The only app that wasn't here last month is CapCut, TikTok's video editor. CapCut had a very strong December, which it ended with an estimated $59M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play - but really, mostly from the App Store.

CapCut's fate is tied to TikTok's and may get banned next week.

Our intelligence shows that together, the top 10 highest earning apps in the world brought in $1.1B of net revenue in December. A double-digit increase over November and the highest month of revenue ever.

5. Demand for Threads Drops Causing a Chart Shuffle - The Most Downloaded Apps in December

Unlike the amazing revenue growth apps saw in December, downloads followed a very different trend - the opposite kind.

I ranked all apps in the App Store and Google Play by downloads and I can tell you December was busy.

Instagram was, again, the most downloaded app in the world. The platform that could see a big influx of users if TikTok is banned saw 48M new downloads in December from the App Store and Google Play, according to Appfigures Intelligence.

That's a bit short of November's total, which surprised me a bit considering so many new phones have been gifted. But when you think about the demographic that got those new phones and their affinity to TikTok, things make more sense.

TikTok was the second most downloaded app in the world in December. Unlike Instagram, its downloads didn't drop. But... they also didn't rise on the global stage. They did rise in the US, but the majority of Growth for TikTok isn't coming from the US so it didn't help it overall.

TikTok is living on borrowed time as the US government is counting the minutes to January 19th, the deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US entity or face a ban from Apple, Google, and on the web.

WhatsApp, Facebook, and ChatGPT round out the top 5 most downloaded apps in December. The entire set is identical to November, but with the same or fewer downloads.

Fewer downloads and more revenue, the trend I talked about for the majority of 2024, continues into 2025. I hope you're not surprised at this point.

CapCut, TikTok's video editor, rose to 6th place after not making it into our chart in November at all. It, too, could be banned next week.

Together, the top 10 most downloaded apps in December made their way into 327M devices globally. That's a few million shy of November's total. Developers, if you're spending any time on user acquisition, make sure you're also spending time on converting those downloads into paying users.

App Intelligence for Everyone!

The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.