NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
More than one billion people are now using WhatsApp, making it the world leader in messaging
Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp has seen a surge in popularity over the last few years with the number of users reaching a whopping one billion this week, according to a WhatsApp official blog post. That means one in seven people who live on our fair planet are active WhatsApp users.
When Facebook acquired the app back in 2014 for $19 billion it’s believed the number of users was somewhere between 450-500 million users. Prior to the acquisition WhatsApp had already seen some pretty incredible numbers, going from 0-400 million users in its first four years, and just five months ago that number was at 900 million. Incidentally, as of September 2015 Facebook had 1.55 billion monthly active users.
“WhatsApp began as a simple idea: ensuring that anyone could stay in touch with family and friends anywhere on the planet without costs or gimmicks standing in the way.” said the company about its achievement. WhatsApp added that presently around 42 billion messages are sent every day, while 1.6 billion photos and 250 million videos are also shared daily. Messages are sent in the 53 languages the app supports.
Prior to WhatsApp hitting the one billion mark messaging app statistics were released in January this year, showing WhatsApp out in front with 900 million. In second place came Facebook’s Messenger at 800 million, then China’s QQ Mobile at 860 million, WeChat at 650 million, and around the 250-300 million mark were skype, Viber and Line.
WhatsApp might be a global leader, but that doesn’t mean the messaging app can sit back. WeChat and QQ Mobile have largely got the Chinese market (only 2 percent of WhatsApp’s users are in China), while Line is also very popular in Asian countries such as Japan (0 percent of WhatsApp’s users) and Thailand (9 percent). Even the American market is not at all sewn up by WhatsApp, with South Africa, Malaysia, Argentina, Singapore and Hong Kong being WhatsApp’s five biggest consuming countries.
WhatsApp may have been created in Silicon Valley by two former Yahoo engineers, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, but residents of the USA actually only make up 8 percent of the app’s users.
Photo credit: Jan Persiel via Flickr
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
