Short video app Douyin and its international version TikTok have brought in a total of $9 million worldwide through in-app sales of virtual coins, not including revenue from China’s third-party Android stores, according to mobile app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
The total earnings increased five-fold compared to $1.5 million in May 2018 and 22% compared to $7.4 million in April.
The coins are used to purchase virtual gifts that can be sent to livestreamers.
iOS users from China contributed the most to last month’s total, spending $5.9 million on coins which accounts for 64% of total revenue. iOS and Android users from the US follow, spending $2 million on the coins, or 22% of May’s revenue .
However, purchases form India, which is one of TikTok’s largest markets in terms of number of users, was almost negligible last month. The 120 million TikTok users in India only spent $45,000 on the app in May, less than 0.5% of the total.
In March, Sensor Tower estimated that the two Bytedance-operated apps have grossed $75 million through the sale of virtual coins. Around 55% of sales came from TikTok users in the US, and 23% were from China’s Douyin users on iOS.
First-time installs of the two apps in May reached 56 million, recovering from the two-week ban in India in April that cost TikTok around 15 million new users, according to Sensor Tower figures. Yet new installs showed close to no increase compared to May 2018 and even a 21% drop from January’s 70.8 million.
Total installs of TikTok and Douyin outside China’s third-party Android stores has reached 1.2 billion. Gross revenue of the two apps is also likely to exceed $100 million before the end of June.
-This article originally appeared on TechNode.
