TikTok uses the coronavirus like a booster rocket, reaches 2 billion downloads

No matter what happens in the world, there will always be winners and losers. And while smartphone manufacturers are losing sales because of the coronavirus pandemic, on the software side things are looking much better.

Services like Netflix are more popular than ever, so much so that they’re starting to congest internet infrastructure and being forced to reduce quality. But people aren’t spending more time only on streaming movies and TV shows.

TikTok was extremely popular even before the worldwide stay at home orders but the coronavirus pandemic launched it to new heights. The short-video platform has now been installed more than 2 billion times on Android and iOS devices, Cnet reports.

The app jumped from 1.5 billion downloads to 2 billion in just 5 months, which averages to about 3.3 million downloads per day. A truly staggering number.

The jump isn’t particularly surprising, however, TikTok received tons of free marketing from bored celebrities showing off their dance moves while quarantining at home.

Unsurprisingly, the US is in the top 3 countries in terms of downloads. 8.2% of the downloads are from the states, which is about 164 million. Of course, that number doesn’t equal unique users but it still shows how popular the app is. The two countries with more downloads are China and India. India takes the top spot with over 30% of all downloads.

Hate it or love it, you can’t argue that TikTok’s bite-sized video format is a recipe for success. And although it revolves around user-generated content, the developers must be doing something right as well.