Most Downloaded App of 2021: You’ll Be Shocked, but Not Really

While social media is traditionally responsible for deciding which app had the best record of performance in the year ending, it is up to regular users to determine the app that would become the most downloaded one. Let us see which one smartphone application turned out to be the most sought-after in the year 2021.

The top-10 most downloaded apps in 2021

The competition among the most popular apps was fierce in 2021, and the winner was hard to predict until the very end. However, it is now safe to announce that TikTok once again came out victorious in this race with 656 million download counts, closely followed by Instagram that has 545 million downloads. Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram round out the top five most downloaded apps list with 416 million, 395 million, and 329 million download totals, respectively. Apps like Snapchat, Zoom, Meta Messenger, CapCut, and Spotify are also featured on this top-10 list, even though their figures are much lower than those of the leaders.

The above statistics, while impressive, show that the download totals for many of these companies were seriously down from the previous reporting period of 2020. Thus, TikTok itself had almost 200 million fewer installs compared to 2020, and WhatsApp experienced an over 200 million drop. Some tech giants like Google Meet and Netflix did not make it to this year’s list at all. It is because the world is slowly recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic that kept people cooped up in their homes and attached to their devices throughout 2020. 

Are you surprised to see the results of this year-end social media app downloads analysis? Were you expecting a different app to come out on top? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!