Social network TikTok to surpass 1.5 billion users in 2022

As per App Annie’s 2022 Mobile Forecast report, TikTok is set to surpass 1.5 billion users in the next twelve months as its cultural influence continues to spread around the world

Despite ongoing challenges from rival platforms, along with regulatory concerns, and even restrictions in some regions, TikTok continues to go from strength to strength. And according to the latest data from App Annie, the app’s growth momentum won’t be slowing down any time soon.

As per App Annie’s 2022 Mobile Forecast report, TikTok is set to surpass 1.5 billion users in the next twelve months as its cultural influence continues to spread around the world.

That would put it well ahead of Instagram, which remains on a billion actives, a number it first reported back in 2018 and hasn’t updated since.

App Annie’s predictions have been solid in the past too. Last November, App Annie predicted that TikTok would surpass a billion active users in 2021, which it did back in September.

As App Annie notes, TikTok’s growth rate is unprecedented, with the app becoming a cultural force faster than any other platform in history. Some of that, of course, comes on the back of established trends – Facebook and Instagram had a harder time reaching their first billion users because they needed to establish new habitual behaviours, which TikTok has benefited from in its rise.

But even so, the app’s rapid ascension is significant – and this is without India, which, at one stage, was TikTok’s biggest user market, at 200 million monthly actives. India banned TikTok back in June 2020 amid tensions with China.

It’s amazing to consider how TikTok has been able to achieve such strong performance in an increasingly crowded social network market. Snapchat once appeared to be set for similar massive growth, till Instagram copied Stories and slowed it right down, which is the same playbook that Instagram’s parent company Meta has followed with TikTok, by adding Reels on both Facebook and Instagram in an effort to steal audience share back from a rising potential rival.

But even more than just that, YouTube has also added Shorts, Snapchat added Spotlight, and other apps have tested similar TikTok-like tools. And yet, even with all of these competing tools being pitted against it, TikTok has remained resilient.

Far from slowing it down, if anything, TikTok has only gained more audience as a result of these counter-growth efforts.