San Francisco, Apr 29 (IANS): The worldwide app installs has reached nearly 37 billion on the App Store and Google Play in total in the first quarter in the year 2022, says a new report.

According to Sensor Tower, TikTok exceeded 3.5 billion all-time downloads, becoming the fifth app to cross this threshold.

"In the first quarter of 2022, apps in the Games and Finance categories showed signs of recovery on the App Store and Google Play," Sensor Tower said in a report.

Instagram's installs were down by 7 per cent quarter-over-quarter; however, it was still the app's second-best total since at least 2014.

And the photo-sharing platform was followed by Facebook and WhatsApp.

Telegram attained fifth position in overall downloads with the traction of more than 100 million downloads worldwide.

The top three publishers worldwide last quarter were Meta, Google, and ByteDance, all of which saw the majority of their downloads come from the non-game apps in their respective portfolios.

The rest of the top 10 were primarily game publishers. Meta, the quarter's top publisher, reached more than 600 million downloads, narrowly edging out Google at number 2.

A recent report said that the global app adoption and consumer spending on in-app purchases, premium apps and subscriptions across the App Store and Google Play were both relatively flat year-over-year in the first quarter this year.