A look at India's top Android and iOS app downloads in 2021

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India's love for short videos, social platforms, and mobile games continued apace in 2021 as the country spent nearly half a billion dollars on mobile apps in Google Play Store and Apple App Store, according to estimates by app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

Meta-owned Instagram, which shifted focus from photos to video this year, topped the charts with 205.4 million app installs on Android this year while Facebook took the second spot with 163.6 million downloads.

E-commerce platform Meesho came third, clocking 464% growth in Android app installs at 162.7 million downloads.

As Moneycontrol reported earlier this month, Meesho is emerging as a dark horse in the cutthroat e-commerce wars in India with its rapid expansion and execution. The SoftBank-backed firm has opened up a new battlefront in the e-commerce space in India, years after the likes of Snapdeal and Shopclues got badly bruised, leaving Amazon and Flipkart to dominate the market.

To be sure, these are overall app install numbers and we haven't been able to source the number of active users.

Fourth on the list was Snapchat, which recently crossed the 100 million user mark in India and saw 64% growth in its app installs at 155.8 million downloads.

Three short-video platforms - MX TakaTak, Dailyhunt parent VerSe Innovation's Josh, and ShareChat's Moj - also made it to the list of India's most downloaded Android apps in 2021.

Top iOS apps of 2021

Tech giants Facebook and Google dominated the list of top downloaded apps on the App Store this year.

Top apps in terms of consumer spend

In terms of consumer spend on Play Store and App Store, action mobile games filled up a few spots on the leaderboard this year which was spearheaded by Garena's battle royale game Free Fire.

Play Store registered $315.8 million in app spend this year until December 15 while the App Store accumulated $173.8 million, taking the overall mobile app spend to $489.6 million.