The YouTube app for Android has now become only the second app to surpass a whopping 10 billion downloads over on the Google Play Store.
Video streaming has exploded in popularity over the past decade with improving global internet speeds, introducing 4G devices, and access to smartphones/tablets. Because the largest and most well-known streaming platform globally, it had always been pretty likely that YouTube would become the primary “proper” user-facing Android app to hit such a download milestone on the Play Store. as long as the app comes pre-installed on most devices, it’s marginally bolstered. It will even include some activations from back before the Play Store even existed (via Android Police).
For those wondering, the sole other “application” to exceed or compared to YouTube’s download figure is not an app in a formal sense. Google Play Services hit the ten billion downloads/install mark back in 2020 but is required for all platform-level features and functions that we all know and love. Conversely, YouTube is a simple good old video streaming on your Android phone or tablet and aimed squarely at end users.
We all like streaming videos to our smartphones, as while tons of pre-installs will account for that massive download figure, it isn’t the complete explanation. as long as there are an estimated 3 billion active Android devices globally, with an outsized portion of these in China not coming with Google Play Services, it’s a powerful volume.
