TikTok is World’s Highest-Earning Non-Game App Despite U.S. and India Headwinds

Despite losing India, a market that contributed a large part of its global downloads, and uncertainties over its fate in the U.S., ByteDance-owned short video app TikTok was still the world’s most downloaded and highest-earning non-game app in September.

Last month, TikTok was downloaded more than 61.1 million times globally, representing a year-on-year increase of 2%, according to a report by research firm SensorTower. TikTok also took the crown in September’s global downloads for non-game apps on both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Users in Brazil seemed most obsessed with TikTok, with 11% of the app’s total September downloads coming from the Latin American country, followed by the U.S. with 9%, the report showed.

Meanwhile, TikTok also retained its position as the world’s highest-earning non-game app in September by raking in more than $130.5 million in revenue, 7.9 times higher than it took in during the same period of last year, according to statistics provided by SensorTower.

Nearly 89% of TikTok’s total September revenue was from China where it is known as Douyin, followed by 6% from the U.S. and 1% from Turkey, the statistics showed.

In the last two months, TikTok has made global headlines due to continued threats by Washington to block it in the U.S. and its efforts to avoid such an outcome. Despite these challenges the app continues to gain market share among young users in the U.S.

The Chinese-owned app has surpassed Facebook’s popular photo-sharing app Instagram as U.S. teenagers’ second-favorite social media app, according to a recent survey by Piper Sandler. The survey found that 34% of teens listed Snapchat as their favorite social media app, followed by 29% who picked TikTok and 25% who picked Instagram.

 

– This article originally appeared on Caixin Global.