I always check the App Store to see what’s new and trending, cool and interesting. I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. And, having worked in the new age of financial apps, building some incredibly popular ones along the way, I’ve been fortunate enough to see apps that I’ve contributed to featured once or twice before.

However, I never had an app featured for more than a few weeks. That’s why, I am always surprised to see an app featured for several months at a time. I have been even more floored to see TikTok now featured over 500+ days.

In reviewing this data, and researching this placement, I believe it’s fair to say that Apple has single-handedly built TikTok with 500+ days of free marketing to all of its users, contributing to nearly 10+ million free downloads per month (potentially 100+ million downloads per year), and the persistent rise of TikTok over all this time. What I mean is, every single English speaking user with an iPhone is shown TikTok as a must-have app every time they visit the app store. Whether you have the app, deleted it or never had it, you will be shown this ad to download TikTok.

Open the Apple App Store on your iPhone, and since 2022, every single of of their users will be presented with this:

How long has this been shown to Apple’s 300+ million English speaking iPhone users? At least since 2022. But I would not be surprised if it went back further.

Here’s a screenshot from 2022 showing their must-have apps taken by another Twitter user:

So, did TikTok grow on its own?

Or was it supported, by over 500+ days of free front page marketing by Apple?

Assuming the App Store is visited over 100 million times per month (there are nearly 1.5 billion iPhone users), and we take the average 2% download rate with a front-page “must-have” listing like this, we can solidly claim that Apple has contributed to 2+ million free downloads per month for TikTok.

Yep, 2+ million free downloads per month.

Now TikTok is a well built app, but there’s no doubt Apple has propped it up over all this time.

This makes me wonder: who controls this editorial homepage? Is Apple compromised? Are they being paid for such free marketing? Is the person managing this page taking a back door deal? There are simply no other reasons to showcase this free ad for this long.