Top Android Downloads Are About Messaging, Gaming, Social Video

When Facebook bought Whatsapp for $16-plus billion (with a b!) five years ago, it might have seemed a little crazy. But no one really said so at the time. And the more time that passed, the more clear it became that there was no madness to this method. Some even said it was Facebook's way of staving off a potential Facebook-killer. Something we can only dream of today. (Remember how much we all liked Facebook back then?)

I bring this up because Facebook's messaging platforms (it owns Whatsapp but also runs Facebook Messenger, of course) remain the heftiest mobile downloads of all for Android users. Which makes them the biggest mobile downloads period, since Android users outnumber iOS users by about 8 to 1 (as of the end of 2018), according to Statista.

Our partners at Statista put together these Android download charts using info gathered by PrioriData from the Google Play store itself. You can see that the US has a predilection for games, with six of the top 10 downloads in that category (including a game where you play, no lie, a snowplow).

The top US download is Facebook Messenger—2.16 million in one month. That's 50 downloads per minute.

The global stats below show a slightly different story. Whatsapp is well ahead of Messenger globally, with a staggering 75.81 million downloads. (Although Messenger is doing well worldwide, too). While the global list also has six games listed, they're behind the messaging/social apps. In particular, take a look at TikTok, which combines the late Musical.ly's lip-sync fun with content that feel much like Vine did, back in the day.

You might not know about TikTok, but your kids and teens do. Maybe those 26.17 million downloads are all parents trying to catch up. Parents: You should know that China-based Bytedance, owner of TikTok, had to pay the FTC $5.7 million in fines for child-privacy transgressions committed by Musical.ly before it was absorbed. Do you know where you children are...recording their antics?

Meanwhile, US users who need some secure messaging? C'mon, switch to Whatsapp! It's only number eight on the US downloads list for Android at 1.36 million, yet it should be ahead of Messenger. Remember, Messenger uses Whatsapp's end-to-end encryption only when you take the extra step to go into secret mode. Why give even more of your privacy away to Zuckerberg than you have already?

Or better yet, download Signal.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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