Triller threatened to sue over report suggesting it inflated its downloads

Estimates from third-party mobile data and analytics firms call these figures into question, however.Initially, the app store intelligence firm Apptopia crunched the numbers around Triller’s downloads and found the claim of 250 million downloads to be inflated. Meanwhile, regular consumers can get a sense of how popular an app is just by looking at the app store’s top charts, which are public.For further context around the now heavily disputed download number, we asked mobile data and analytics firm App Annie and app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower for their own Triller data. It says if you look at the 90-120 day retention figures for TikTok or Snap, they would be above 30%, which is how its numbers should be compared.Image Credits: ApptopiaImage Credits: ApptopiaApptopia’s report also pointed to Triller’s App Store and Google Play chart rankings as another data point in questioning Triller’s download claims.For those unfamiliar, the app store chart rankings are driven by downloads combined with other factors, like velocity of downloads, ratings, user retention and more.Image Credits: ApptopiaImage Credits: ApptopiaTo analyze Triller’s claim in the context of its chart rankings, Apptopia examined several other popular U.S. apps for comparison’s sake, including Twitter, Pinterest, Gmail and Twitch.These apps were selected because they had a similar number of U.S. downloads to Triller for the time period Apptopia used to analyze Triller’s claim: July 23, 2015-August 2, 2020. The former is the date of Triller’s launch and the latter is when it issued a press release stating its 250 million download figure.Image Credits: ApptopiaImage Credits: ApptopiaSimply put, if Triller’s 250 million figure was correct, then the app would seemingly appear much higher on the U.S. App Store and Google Play charts than it does.On iOS, the average overall ranking for Gmail during this time period was No. 17, Twitter was No. 35, Pinterest was No. 33 and Twitch was No. 233. In the last 10 days, it has been No. 1 in Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Italy and France, and in the last 30 days in India, U.S., South Africa, Nigeria and dozens of others.“Our growth and numbers are very fresh and very new, so taking anything long term or just the U.S. is neither relevant nor applicable to us,” said Triller CEO Mike Lu.Image Credits: App AnnieImage Credits: App AnnieThe timing of Triller’s claim of 250 million downloads follows reports that said the startup is raising hundreds of millions in new funding.