This Week in Apps - TikTok is Gone!
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.
U.S. Revenue Index (vs. 30 days ago)
Insights
1. No More TikTok - This is Where TikTokers Are Going
It's official, TikTok is banned in the US and has been removed from the App Store and Google Play along with CapCut and Lemon8, two other apps owned and operated by TikTok's parent company, ByteDance.
Just for fun, I calculated the fees Apple and Google will lose every day these apps are banned. Can you guess what that is? Here's the real amount.
But with TikTok now gone, several apps have risen to the top of the App Store in the US. As of Friday, the top three got more than 2 million new downloads since last week!
Right now, REDnote, Flip, and Clapper are the top apps in the US App Store. All three are somewhat similar to TikTok, but all three are built around e-commerce, which is interesting.
Rednote is another Chinese-owned app that was not popular in the US until last week - and doesn't even show its name in English on the App Store, just on Google Play - is at the top of the chart followed by Flip and Clapper.
Our estimates show that all three had a massive growth spurt in the last few days rising from single-digit thousand downloads per day earlier in January to tens of thousands on Friday from the US, or hundreds in the case of the leader.
Flip, a social network build around product reviews and promotion, ran a bunch of TikTok ads over the last few days. Our App intelligence shows that it added 580K new downloads from the App Store and Google Play in the US so far this year with the majority of the downloads coming in the last week.
Clapper, a social platform that revolves around video like TikTok, has added 646K new downloads in the same period, according to our estimates. It added 87K new downloads on Friday, a whopping 1,030% more than the 7K new downloads it saw on January 1st.
And then there's REDnote, the app that made the biggest push during TikTok's last few days using a barrage of influencers. The technique was very successful and brought over more than 123K new downloads on Friday for a total of 818K new downloads this month, and many more over the weekend.
Fun fact, both Rednote and Flip use React Native, according to our SDK Intelligence.
It's worth noting that REDnote is a Chinese app that mainly targets China. Because of that it's not fully localized into English (see its icon and screenshots, which are in Chinese in the US App Store) leading some Americans to want to learn Mandarin and Chinese users to complain of culture shock.
In the last few hours a slew of other apps seem to have increased in popularity, including Likee, favorited, and Triller. Let's see which will stick.
This race will be an interesting one to watch evolve, especially if the ban is reversed tomorrow. Hold on to your seats!
2. A VPN Won't Help You Get on TikTok, But That's Not Stopping the Downloads!
TikTok's ban went into effect a few hours ago which means it was completely removed from the App Store and Google Play, but also blocked from letting users who already have the app log in.
This isn't the first time a popular app is banned in a specific country so many "knew" what to do - go through a VPN. A VPN lets you pretend you're in a different country which usually fools such blocks (just ask Netflix...)
But not this time! See, TikTok knows a lot about its users, more than the average service, and disabled access to all American accounts regardless of where they're logging in from.
That isn't stopping thousands of users from downloading VPN apps:
Right now, 3 of the top 10 apps in the US App Store are VPNs. 7 when we look at the top 50. All saw downloads rise as soon as TikTok was banned, and all rose sharply quickly indicating a surge of downloads.
Brandless VPN - Super Unlimited Proxy is currently at the lead, ranking 3 in the App Store's Top Apps chart in the US. The chart ranks apps by downloads and the speed at which the downloads are happening. Over the last 36 hours, its rank changed from 91 to 3 - that's a lot of downloads!
Another brandless provider by the name of VPN - Fast VPN Super is right below it, having climbed 155 spots in the last 36 hours according to our hourly rank tracker.
Nord VPN, the VPN you've probably heard of from your favorite YouTuber and the first reputable provider, ranks 9th right now, having climbed 160 spots!
X-VPN, Proton VPN, Free VPN .org, and Express VPN all rose hundreds of spots overnight.
For you devs out there - The keyword "VPN" has a popularity score of 86 which is really high and guess who's the top search results. Yes, both brandless apps that rose the most in ranks (check in Keyword Inspector). If you aren't spending time on your App Store Optimization you'll lose out on overnight trends like this one.
3. Elon's ChatGPT Competitor Finally Got Its Own App
Grok, X's AI, has finally landed as a standlone app in the US. I've been waiting for this since the model opened up through the X app back in 2023.
Why? Because as a standalone app it'll get discovery making it more competitive and pushing for more competition. And more competition is more better in my opinion.
FYI - This is a snippet from an 80+ page AI industry report we'll be publishing very son. Keep an eye out if you're in the space. Get in touch if you're a journalist and want early access.
Grok's new standalone app soft-launched in Australia at the tail end of December, then expanded to India, and eventually came to the US last week. As of right now, Grok is only available to download in six countries. Oh, and it's also only available on iOS and not Android - don't ask me why...
When Grok came to the US there was a massive push on X by Elon and other X folks to spread the word, including a push notification to all/some/many (I'm not too sure of the scope) X users - but unlike all other competitors the push was 100% organic. There were no paid ads in or out of the App Store.
Naturally, I was curious how a completely organic push would go so I compared the first week of downloads to Grok's competitors: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot.
Across all five launches, Grok ranks 4th, right above Claude. If you've been following me for long enough you know how I feel about Claude's mobile app - a big missed opportunity, so the bar wasn't high.
Our estimates show that Grok's standalone app was downloaded 184K times in its first week on the App Store in the US while Claude was downloaded 96K times. Looking up, however, it's Copilot from Microsoft that ranked 3rd, Gemini from Google that ranked 2nd, and the king - ChatGPT - that ranks 1st.
What's different about all three? They all kicked off with huge ad budgets while Grok's launch was completely organic. ChatGPT spent tons on Apple Search Ads, Google plastered the web and sent its sales force to promote Gemini, and Microsoft bought a Superbowl ad for Copilot. Grok didn't.
I see this launch as a big win for Grok, and having used the standalone app, I can already tell it could become ChatGPT's main rival within a few months - especially once it rolls out globally.
Which team are you on?
Grow Smarter, with Data.
Affordable tools for ASO, Competitive Intelligence, and Analytics.
4. Not the Christmas I Expected... Here Are the Most Downloaded Games in December
The most important month for games is behind us, so I crunched the numbers and ranked the winners and losers of this Christmas season.
The thing is, downloads didn't really roll the way I expected even though nearly every single rank in our chart has a different app when compared to November - and that's extremely rare.
Block Blast was the most downloaded game in December. The hyper-casual title has been growing a lot over the last few months, so this wasn't a surprise, and rallied hard in 2024.
According to our App Intelligence, Block Blast made it into 21M new iPhones and Androids in December - the most downloads the title has seen in a single month since its release in 2022.
Dethroned, Subway Surfers was the second most downloaded game in December with 20M estimated downloads. Just a smidge lower than what it hauled in November, so it's really a W for Block Blast and not an L for Subway Surfers, even though it dropped a spot.
Roblox jumped in December into the third spot with 18M downloads, while Hole.io and Free Fire both rose to round out the top five.
You may recall November's TikTok sensation Mini Games, which ranked second overall. Mini Games is still on our chart in December but it dropped to the 9th spot and will likely disappear in January.
Pokemon TCG also dropped a few spots since November while every other app in the bottom five rose.
Together, however, total downloads dropped 4% in December, which I did not expect at all.
5. Top Game Developers Earned Nearly $100M More in December - These Are the Highest Earning Games
December wasn't great for downloads, but if you remember the trend, revenue is going in the opposite direction, and if you didn't believe me before, let December be the proof.
According to our App Intelligence, revenue of the top 10 games rose 10% in December!
Like games, the chart is full of movement, including the top dog, Last War. The hyper-casual title's net revenue rose 30% in December to $114M. That's what Funfly, its publisher, gets to keep after Apple and Google's fees are paid. That's a well-earned crown.
Pokemon TCG came in second with $110M of net revenue, according to our estimates - a tad lower than November's total, which aligns with the drop in downloads we observed.
Whiteout Survival came in fourth as net revenue dropped 13% to $95M. Last War's growth had to come from somewhere...
And if you're curious about Honor of Kings, the China-only title that has dominated our chart for several months now, you'll find it aaaaaall the way down in 4th place with $105M of estimated net revenue.
Monopoly Go, which ranked 5th in November, continued to hold its position in December but with an extra $10M added to its bottom line.
Our App Intelligence shows that the top 10 highest earning games raked in a whopping $933M of net revenue in December, up a whopping $84M from November. Downloads down and revenue up. You better believe it.
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.
Are you a Journalist? You can get access to our app and market intelligence for free through the Appfigures for Journalists program. Contact us for more details.
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.
