ByteDance nets top user spends

Douyin, TikTok report $266m in January alone, twice that of same period last year

Short video app Douyin and its overseas version TikTok continued to top the charts for in-app consumer spending among non-game mobile apps, the latest ranking report showed.

Users spent approximately $266 million in January alone in the star apps owned by China's ByteDance, data from digital intelligence firm Sensor Tower showed.

That figure was up 2.1 times from the same period last year, based on in-app expenditures in the two dominant mobile app markets: App Store and Google Play.

Their momentum had picked up on a robust trajectory since 2021, when some $2.3 billion was spent by users in the dual apps, up 77 percent year-on-year from $1.3 billion in 2020.

While China remains TikTok's largest market in terms of consumer spending, its share is being gradually diluted as the app becomes increasingly popular overseas. For instance, in the quarter ended December, some 57 percent of spending came from Chinese users, whereas China's App Store represented 85 percent of in-app spending in the fourth quarter of 2020.

The United States maintained its rank as the second-largest revenue-generator for TikTok, with its share in spending growing steadily. Between October and December, consumers in the US spent nearly $110 million in the app, representing 13 percent of global revenue. This was 5 percentage points higher than in the fourth quarter of 2020 when the US was responsible for $29.6 million, or around 8 percent of its worldwide spending.

Sensor Tower data revealed earlier that TikTok had surpassed 3 billion installs globally.

Based on worldwide installs from the App Store and Google Play and excluding pre-installed apps, the four other apps that have accrued more than 3 billion installs since January 2014 include WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook and Instagram, Sensor Tower data showed.

TikTok's global influence continues to spread, as it is more commonly coming from sources beyond China's App Store, said Stephanie Chan, mobile insights strategist at Sensor Tower.

"Its mark has also been felt in other apps, as an ecosystem of nearly 1,000 apps has launched with complementary functionality," Chan said in a memo published last month.

TikTok said in January it is testing a paid subscription model that enables content curators to charge people for viewing their content. The functionality is in the trial phase and is "only applicable to certain markets", the company said.

"ByteDance will undoubtedly look to continue building on this momentum with new features－such as the Repost button－and efforts to grow its creator community in 2022," Chan added.