The Apple App Store attracts 650 million people every week and is a good indicator of the most popular digital trends in the country.
Not surprisingly, in a year when inflation has skyrocketed and social media has changed dramatically, the list of most popular apps is a mix of discount online shopping, previously unreleased social networks and other mobility and communication tools .
Among the ten most popular applications are two heavily criticized Chinese applications, Temu and TikTok. Cybersecurity experts have expressed doubts about the true purpose of these applications. Temu, a discount online shopping platform, is not profitable and even loses money every time a Canadian internet user makes a transaction on their application. However, the app would collect data about its users that some experts say would go far beyond what is normally allowed by iOS and Android, Apple and Google’s mobile systems.
The same experts worry that this data would be of interesting value to third-party buyers who would use it to better track or target mobile Internet users in North America.
TikTok, on the other hand, is a fun, perhaps even amazing, social network that is not available in China. There it will be replaced by a social learning and educational network. Many people believe that TikTok was created to distract young Americans and give future Chinese minds a competitive advantage in subjects considered essential to the national economy, such as science and math.
The navigation application Google Maps and the Google search engine, the social networks Instagram and Meta’s Threads, WhatsApp, the Gmal messaging application and Microsoft’s Authenticator are also among the top 10 most popular free applications on the App Store in Canada in 2023.
In second place is also a video editor called CapCut.