The short-form video software that TikTok offers has reached a new benchmark. According to new research by data.ai, a provider of app intelligence services, the app reached one billion monthly active users in 2021 and has now become the first non-game mobile app to generate ten billion dollars in consumer spending across the Apple App Store and Google Play combined. Other applications that have accomplished this feat are all games.
One of these games is Candy Crush Saga, which King/Activision Blizzard owns and is the highest-grossing app with almost $12 billion in annual revenue. Other games that have accomplished this feat include Tencent’s Honor of Kings, XFLAG/Mixi’s Monster Strike, and Supercell’s Clash of Clans.
In the paper, it is said that TikTok had already accumulated more than $6.2 billion in consumer spending by the beginning of 2023 and that it continued to collect another $3.8 billion during the year, representing an increase of 61% from the beginning. According to data.ai, this amount is also fifteen percent greater than the total income of $3.3 billion in 2022. As a point of reference, the study only covers TikTok’s consumer spending across iOS and Google Play; it does not include the expenditure of third-party Android app shops located in China. This indicates that TikTok’s users’ overall amount of money might be substantially more significant.
TikTok’s in-app purchases of “coins” are the source of the expenditure. Coins are virtual money that users may use to purchase presents for producers who can be found on the platform. Producers are rewarded with these gifts in exchange for the material they produce, which can be exchanged for fiat currency. TikTok keeps 50 percent of the compensation. The bundle of 1321 coins that can be purchased for $19.99 is the most popular in-app purchase for the app, and it accounts for one-fourth of the app’s earnings. Although TikTok produces money in addition to in-app sales, such as through advertising and e-commerce with TikTok Shop, these sources of revenue were not taken into account in the research conducted by data.ai.
According to Data.ai, iOS users in China and Americans accounted for most of the in-app spending that helped TikTok pass the $10 billion mark. This is because both markets contributed around thirty percent of the income alone or sixty percent of the total when combined. The following are some other markets, which include Saudi Arabia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan. These countries collectively contributed 13% of the app’s income from in-app purchases.
Other non-game applications bring in billions of dollars but are not even close to TikTok in revenue. TikTok is the only non-game app that has reached $10 billion. Tinder and YouTube are its next-closest competitors. However, the research says that both platforms are behind TikTok by a margin of between $2 and $3 billion.
“TikTok is on the verge of becoming the mobile app with the biggest earnings ever, and it is getting close to the $15 billion milestone in the year 2024. “In a statement announcing the new milestone, Lexi Sydow, Head of Insights at data.ai, stated that consumers are spending more than eleven million dollars per day tipping their favorite content producers, driving TikTok above the world’s most lucrative mobile game to date, which was the addicting and well-liked Candy Crush Saga. She continued, “TikTokers are expected to spend a forty-hour work week each month in the app by the end of 2024, which is a twenty-two percent increase from 2023.”
According to the company’s projections, TikTok’s revenue is expected to increase once again in 2024, surpassing $15 billion in consumer spending.
