If there ever was an app tailor-made for the coronavirus it is Zoom. The video conferencing app can host video chats consisting of up to 100 participants. During the three months from April through June, when COVID-19 was keeping most Americans inside, Zoom generated a new App Store record 94 million installs on iOS. During the first quarter, just before the pandemic became a major issue in the states, short-form video app TikTok had the previous record with 67 million App Store installations.
How amazing are those achievements made by Zoom and TikTok? Before this year, no non-game iOS app ever had more than 50 million downloads in a single quarter. And when you throw in the number of downloads sourced from the Google Play Store during the second quarter, Zoom was installed over 300 million times during the three months from April through June. Also topping 300 million installs during the quarter was TikTok; the latter was downloaded 71 million times from the Apple App Store during Q2; that is a 154% gain year-over-year.
During the second quarter, total downloads in the U.S. App Store (2.2 billion) beat out downloads in the Chinese App Store (2.1 billion) for the first time in years. On an annual basis, the number of iOS app downloads in the U.S. was up 27% compared to Q2 compared to just 2% in China. Globally, App Store downloads rose by 22.6% in the second quarter to 9.1 billion. Second-quarter downloads in the Google Play Store worldwide hit 38.7 billion, up 34.9%.
With many Americans communicating through Zoom as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc in the states, the app should continue to show strong growth during the current quarter. TikTok also should continue to show growth in the U.S. as Americans create TikTok videos to distract themselves from all of the stress caused by COVID-19.