There are a lot of people out there with smartphones (in the billions) where most of them use Android and download from the Play Store. Since one of the key uses of smartphones in this era is posting content on our social networking profiles, these networks have become popular and in turn gained a lot of installs.
Instagram is a pretty popular app with over 500 million monthly active users and it was about time they hit a billion installs on the Play Store. They have finally done it according to a report by Android Police where they join the rest of their siblings on the Facebook ecosystem.
This is actually no mean feat for the app that was bought by Facebook in 2012 for a billion dollars and turned into this massive social network that has matured over time. It joins the other Facebook apps like Messenger, Facebook app itself and WhatsApp in the billion app installs club.
Facebook is not the only developer on the Play Store to have several apps with over a billion installs. Google is the other major player here with several apps with over a billion installs since one of their requirements to manufacturers when they ship Android on their devices is to install their services (Maps, Chrome, YouTube, Gmail etc)
It is also interesting to note the usual discrepancy we usually notice between the number of installs and the actual active users which the latter is usually the metric social networking companies focus on. Apparently Instagram is the 19th app to achieve this feat so all eyes will be on the next app to have a billion installs on the Play Store.
