TikTok, other China-linked apps, thrived in the U.S. in 2025

TikTok has just announced a new U.S. venture that will keep it operating there after years of concerns about its links to China. But even as it was nearly banned and faced scrutiny from officials, the short-video platform still dominated in 2025.

The app, owned by Beijing-headquartered ByteDance, was the second-most-downloaded app across Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store in the U.S. in 2025, according to Sensor Tower data, defying a near-ban in the market.

Another ByteDance app, CapCut, ranked fourth, with the video editing tool climbing three places from a year ago.

Other China-linked apps also had strong showings across U.S. app stores in 2025, with major e-commerce players like Temu and Shein thriving even as they were targeted by policy changes, Sensor Tower data showed.

Temu, which ran a high-profile Super Bowl ad campaign in 2024, fell from the top position that year, but still ranked in seventh place in 2025, even as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs upended its business model.

Although Shein did not rank among the top 10 most downloaded apps overall, it was the most downloaded app in the apparel shopping category in the U.S. in 2025.

Separately, OpenAI’s ChatGPT was America’s most downloaded app last year, as adoption of generative artificial intelligence continued to expand.

Sensor Tower’s data shows that U.S. consumers continue to favor apps coming out of China, often synonymous with addictive algorithms, affordability, and convenience.

“2025 showed that these China-originated apps aren’t just policy arbitrageurs, but are adaptive ecosystems with governance capabilities on both the demand and supply sides,” Liang Chen, a Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at Singapore Management University, told CNBC.