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April 26 (UPI) -- TikTok surpassed Instagram in the first quarter of the year to take the top spot for worldwide downloads, a new report shows. Since the beginning of the quarter, TikTok has been downloaded more than 175 million times overall worldwide, surpassing Instagram, which took the second spot, followed by Facebook, the "Q1 2022: Store Intelligence Data Digest" report from Sensor Tower shows.
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WhatsApp, which was downloaded 125 million times in Q1 2022 worldwide, came in fourth, followed by Telegram in the fifth spot. Other social media apps in the Top 10 of downloads included Snapchat and Messenger, which were each downloaded over 75 million times.
By comparison, Zoom had over 50 million global downloads, YouTube reached 50 million, and Twitter and Pinterest crossed 25 million downloads, but fell under the 50 million threshold.
The report shows that TikTok is one of the world's fastest growing social media apps.
In Q1 2021, TikTok surpassed 3.5 billion all-time downloads, becoming just the fifth app, and the only one not owned by Meta to achieve that milestone, the report noted.
In 2018, WhatsApp had 250 million downloads worldwide, but since then, no app has had more global downloads than TikTok.
In U.S. downloads alone, TikTok has been the top app each quarter since Q1 2021. Zoom had taken the top spot in the fourth quarter of 2020.
In Europe, TikTok took the top spot in downloads followed by WhatsApp and then Telegram.
Telegram had its second best quarter in Europe, only trailing the nearly 28 million downloads it had in Q1 2021, the report noted.
Worldwide, app downloads totaled 36.9 billion in Q1 2022, a 1.4% increase over last year.
Among other highlights, the report noted that inflation and rising gas prices caused a surge in demand for gas price tracking and reward apps. The word game, Wordle, was the top mobile game in the United States.
The Sensor Tower estimates included worldwide downloads for iPhone, iPad and Google Play for Jan. 1 through March 31. The estimates include unique installs only, and Android estimates do not include third-party stores.
