TikTok is Back in the US After Enormous Losses to ByteDance, Stores, and Creators
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TikTok magically appeared on the App Store and Google Play two weeks ago, which means it could bring back its in-app purchases. TikTok became the most popular app in the US App Store and Google Play within a few hours of its return and climbed the top grossing chart within a few days.
It lost the #1 position in the App Store to ChatGPT a few days ago, but is still ranking high just like it did pre-ban.
As the highest-earning app, I was curious to see just how much money was lost in the 26 days of the TikTok Ban.
Can you guess?
Last month I looked at the economics of TikTok, which showed the giant is making so much money from selling coins that the fees it pays Apple and Google alone account for more than what ChatGPT makes in an entire month.
If you haven't guessed already, the loss was massive.
Using the average growth rate from the last six months and our App Intelligence, I calculated TikTok's 26-day ban to amount to a loss of $137M of gross revenue - what users pay to buy coins, which they then give creators they like.
That's almost as much as all of December, which was TikTok's biggest month of revenue (and several days longer).
Splitting it up, our estimates show Apple and Google lost a whopping $41M in fees. That's as much as streaming app Peacock made on the App Store in January after fees. Talk about scale.
Bytedance splits what's left after fees with creators, leaving a net loss of $48M to the company and $48M to creators on the platform.
Yes, individual creators lost that much in under a month. Now I see why the administration rushed to bring the app back.
We don't know why TikTok was allowed back on the App Store and Google Play, and whether it actually ended up selling to a US company, but one thing I'm pretty sure of is that it's not going away any time soon.
P.S. - If you happen to know how it came back please let me know.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
