Worldwide app downloads reached 36.1 billion in Q4 2021, a 2.7 per cent year-over-year increase according to Sensor Tower.
In its latest report, Tower Sensor said that the mobile app space is still in a state of transformation amid the ongoing global pandemic. Categories such as Shopping, Finance, and Entertainment came out on top at the end of 2021, while others are still trying to bounce back.
The number of downloads in the whole of 2021 exceeded 144.2 billion.
Finance and Tools were among the quarter’s top categories with 39% and 26% year-over-year growth on Google Play, respectively. This year, cryptocurrency and investing apps gained momentum with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) emerging as a hot trend.
Off these downloaded games, 27.8 billion were from Google Play and 8.3 billion from Apple Store in Q4 2021 and 32.8 billion and 11.4 billion over the whole of 2021 respectively.
The report also digs into the success of Instagram last quarter as the first app from Meta to reach the top of the downloads chart for a quarter since WhatsApp in Q4 2019.
It was Instagram’s best quarter for downloads since at least 2014. TikTok retained the top spot overall in 2021.
On App Store, TikTok and YouTube have held the No1 and No2 spots, respectively, since Q2 2020. After two down quarters, YouTube bounced back with its third-best quarter to date. Meanwhile, TikTok exceeded 50 million App Store installs for the eighth straight quarter.
Twitter reached the top 20 for the first time since Q1 2021, and the fourth time since the start of 2020. Twitter saw adoption jump 34% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2020, and it has maintained most of those gains since.
On Google Play, Meta had the top two apps for the second straight quarter, with Instagram passing Facebook for the first time since at 2014. Meta-published apps WhatsApp, Messenger, and WhatsApp Business were also among the top 20.
Gaming app rings in the moolah
Garena Free Fire was the top mobile game by downloads in Q4 2021 and in the full year. This was the first year that Free Fire led all games by installs after finishing runner-up in 2019 and 2020.
After ranking runner-up to PUBG Mobile in 2019 and Among Us in 2020, Garena Free Fire was the most downloaded game in 2021. Subway Surfers and PUBG Mobile were also frequently among the top games since 2019.
Meanwhile, record-breaking eight mobile games, including PUBG Mobile from Tencent, Honor of Kings from Tencent, and Genshin Impact from miHoYo, have generated more than $1 billion globally from the App Store and Google Play last year.
PUBG Mobile, localised as Game For Peace in China and Battlegrounds Mobile in India, and Honor of Kings rank as the No1 and No2 revenue generating mobile titles worldwide this year, accumulating $2.8 billion each, up 9% and 14.7% year-over-year, respectively.
Ranking at No3 last year was Genshin Impact, which raked in $1.8 billion in revenue in 2021. Launched on September 28, 2020, miHoYo continued to provide the game with a plethora of updates, regularly adding new islands, characters and features to keep players engaged.
In March last year, PUBG Mobile hit 1 billion download mark, to become the third-most downloaded game in history after Subway Surfer and Candy Crush. It crossed $5.1 billion in lifetime earnings for Tencent that day.
To shed additional light on these trends and more, Sensor Tower also announced the release of its latest Q4 2021 Store Intelligence Data Digest, which analyses the quarter’s top apps, games, and publishers, plus the full year of 2021.
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