Indians spent over 5.5 bn hours on TikTok in 2019

Indians spent over 5.5 billion hours on TikTok, according to a new report. This is a six-time increase over the 2018 data, wherein India spent 900 million hours watching videos on the mobile video application.

India also became the biggest market for TikTok outside China. According to analytics firm App Annie, the number of monthly active users (MAU) on TikTok increased by 90 percent to 91 million in December, reported The Times of India.

Facebook saw an increase of 15 percent in its user base and the number of hours spent. The MAU in December was 224 million, whereas the total hours spent by users on Facebook was 25.5 billion hours.

Facebook’s Instagram also saw an increase in its MAU at 40 percent to 137 billion as of December on Android, which operates on over 90 percent of India’s smartphone population.

Notably, TikTok launched roughly 18 months ago in September 2017 in India, whereas Facebook has been available in India since 2006. In such a short duration, the video-sharing app from ByteDance is catching up quickly with Facebook.

“In December 2019, the total time spent on TikTok in India was more than the next 11 countries combined. It is not only that there are more people engaging with TikTok but there is deeper engagement per person,” said Lexi Sydow, senior market insights manager, App Annie.

The most significant growth factor for TikTok, according to Annie, is its ability to blur the lines between a social network and entertainment.

According to a Sensor Tower Data report, TikTok was downloaded over 323 million times across the Apple App Store and Google Play Store on Android in 2019. Facebook, on the other hand, was downloaded 156 million times, which is nearly half of TikTok’s downloads.