TikTok most downloaded app in Pakistan

Islamabad: Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudry has said that popular Chinese video sharing application has so far been downloaded in Pakistan by 20 million users this year making it the most downloaded app in the country.

“TikTok is the most downloaded application this year with 20 million (application) downloads this year,” the minister said while discussing the digital media landscape in the context of regional situation. The overall active users of the Chinese application are around 40 million.

Chaudhri said while the content development will sprawl here and cannot be stopped, “in order to make sure it does not harm or damage our society or people, we need to regularize content development apps, like the TikTok.”

He said to an onlooker from a foreign country, TikTok content seems normal and its regulations being charted as unjust but in “our society where anyone can make videos of private people and girls without their consent and post them online, this is an issue that needs to be resolved.”

He also briefed the journalists present in the session over the hybrid war strategies used via Twitter and its concerted trends rub from click farms. “It is not a theory but a fact present before our eyes,” he added. The information minister said advertising volume on digital media had compounded in the past three years when it stood only Rs 4 billion. “Now it stands at Rs 25 billion annually,” he mentioned. He added: “Google and Facebook alone rake in Rs 7 billion revenue in ads from Pakistan. In the two to three years, formal (mainstream) media advertising will fall behind (the digital and social media).”

The minister also revealed statistics on media usage in Pakistan. “There are 114 satellite channels in the country. Pakistan has 258 FM radio channels of which 196 are commercial. Twelve internet TV licenses have been issued this year. Pakistan has over 1,600 newspapers. The government is tracking down on them and reducing advertisements in fake newspapers. There are over 180 million mobile connections in the country. Over 98 million Pakistanis are 3G subscribers. Pakistan has 100 million internet broadband subscribers. There are 60.5 million people on WhatsApp, 50 million on YouTube, 30 million on Facebook, and 50 million on other social media applications such as LinkedIn and Twitter,” he elaborated.