According to the data, provided by Sensor Tower, in January 2021, Telegram became the most downloaded app. Its popularity has exceeded all imaginable limits. Thus, the number of downloads and installations has reached 63 million. Curiously, in the previous year, Telegram was ranked ninth. However, by the beginning of February 2021, the messenger had surpassed the TikTok app with nearly 62 million downloads and installations.

Experts suppose that such enormous popularity was mainly due to WhatsApp's new Privacy Policy that gave rise to numerous difficulties. Notably, at the end of the previous year, WhatsApp and Instagram occupied third and fourth places respectively according to the number of downloads. In January 2021, they slid to fifth and sixth places. Zoom, a widely used video conferencing service, also moved to seventh place from fifth one in December 2020.

WhatsApp's new Privacy Policy contributed to Telegram’s popularity. The fact is that changes in the policy led to extensive criticism from the users. That is how Telegram appeared among the leading apps.