The 10 most recommended iOS apps of all time

To celebrate the App Store's 10th birthday, App Annie, an app analytics company, has compiled a comprehensive list of the most popular apps over the past 10 years. The App Store was launched by Apple in July 2008. Since its launch, more than 170 billion apps have been downloaded, and developers have earned a total of $30 billion, making it the world's most profitable app store.

Here are the 10 most downloaded iOS apps of the past decade:

10. QQ

QQ is a chat application developed by Tencent, which allowed ordinary Chinese users to access the Internet at the earliest. QQ has successfully entered the top ten applications in the world due to its huge number of users in China. Although it is only ranked tenth, it is not easy considering that this download volume is almost entirely supported by Chinese users.

9. WeChat

WeChat is a phenomenal chat application launched by Tencent after QQ. When it was launched, it focused on voice chat. Today, WeChat has become a lifestyle, just like its slogan. WeChat payment has become a convenient function used by uncles, aunts, grandpas and aunts. As of March 2018, WeChat has more than 1 billion monthly active users.

8. Skype

Microsoft bought Skype in 2012 for $8.5 billion and it has been downloaded more than 1 billion times on smartphones. Even though Apple and Google have both made their own video chat apps, Skype remains one of the most popular apps in the world. The app was overhauled in 2017 to better compete with the likes of Apple's FaceTime and Facebook Messenger.

7. Snapchat

Snapchat is a photo-sharing app developed by two Stanford University students. Launched on the App Store in 2011, Snapchat is now one of the most popular apps of all time. As of February, Snapchat had 191 million daily active users.

6. Google Maps

Google Maps is always one of the top ten apps in the App Store and is the sixth most popular app of all time. It’s a pity that we don’t use Google’s related services. In fact, domestic map apps such as Amap and Baidu are more down-to-earth.

5. WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a cross-platform mobile chat application that was acquired by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014. Currently, WhatsApp has 1.5 billion active users per month.

4. Instagram

Instagram is a photo social application launched in 2010. It won the "Best App in App Store" and was acquired by Facebook in 2012. Last month, Instagram announced that it had reached 1 billion users.

3. YouTube

YouTube, Google's most popular video site, is also consistently the top free app in the App Store and the third most popular app of all time.

2. Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger, a messaging app spun off from Facebook's chat service, has become extremely popular and is consistently ranked at the top of the App Store's free apps charts.

This year, Facebook is redesigning Messenger to make it simpler and more intuitive.

1. Facebook

As the world's largest social service website, Facebook covers more than 130 countries around the world and has 2 billion users. There is no doubt that Facebook is still one of the top iOS applications in the world and the most downloaded iOS application of all time.

In the first quarter of this year alone, Facebook was downloaded 29.4 million times. Although affected by the privacy scandal, Facebook still sits firmly on the throne of the world's largest social platform. It is expected that the download volume in the second quarter will not be much worse, because people usually say no, but their bodies are still very honest.

Of course, this is just a ranking based on the number of downloads. Everyone has a different opinion about the best app. What is the best app in your mind?