Instagram finally hits 1bn download mark on Android

It’s taken about four years, but Instagram has this week hit the one billion downloads mark on Google’s Play Store.

Instagram, an app which allows its users to share and interact with user-posted images, is now the fourth Facebook-owned app that has hit that figure (after Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp). According to Android Police, it’s the 19th app on the Play Store to reach this figure.

To put those numbers into rough  perspective, around one-in-seven people on the planet have downloaded the app on an Android smartphone.

Considering only about a billion-and-a-half devices run a version of Google’s operating system, that’s massively impressive. The download figure does seem a tad inflated though, considering that 500-million people are reportedly using the service.

Instagram has yet to dip below the top ten most downloaded iOS apps in SA this year

Although the Play Store’s analytics system isn’t completely reliable, it does show that the photo sharing app’s growth hasn’t slowed much since its launch. Back in 2012, the app recorded a million downloads a day on Android devices, which kept pace with the likes of Microsoft’s then-huge OS, Windows 8 consumer preview.

In terms of iOS downloads, we don’t know the exact download figures of Instagram on Apple‘s platform.

According to app analytics service AppAnnie though, the app has yet to dip below the top ten most downloaded apps in South Africa this year.

It’s also been a busy year for Instagram too, with the company launching its new Instagram Stories feature (above), which borrows heavily from Snapchat’s Stories feature.