The annual cycles of tropical and subtropical precipitation were estimated by parameterizing them using the inferential circular statistics approach. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) version 7 dataset which has spatial coverage from 50°S to 50°N and temporal coverage from 1998 to 2018 (21 years) was used to compute the monthly precipitation climatology data. Their annual cycles can be estimated using the bimodal von Mises distribution. The estimated parameters were found to sufficiently capture some interesting characteristics such as the non-uniformity and bimodality of precipitation rate associated with regions of convergence zones and subtropical highs. The difference in timings of maximum and minimum precipitation suggest that precipitation maxima over the continent were found to follow the position of the Sun at an average time lag of 1.2 months. Three examples of applying these parameters are given including the regional classification of precipitation which emphasizes on the bimodality the non-uniformity and the bimodality of their annual cycles, the evolution of the southern Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) in the Pacific Ocean which was found to propagate westward from 90°W in mid-March to 150°W in early-April at an estimated speed of 21.6 km/h, and the precipitation variability in the case of Paris in France in which the precipitation anomaly tend to decrease at a highly significant rate of −9.716 mm/month per decade (p value ≤0.01).