People have surely moved away from the use of SMS as their default way of sending text messages. Text messaging apps have taken the place of SMSes and people around the world are using them for their text messaging needs. With the advent of text messaging apps like WhatsApp, the cost of sending text messages has fallen to zero. WhatsApp popularity around the world has prompted many others to jump on the bandwagon. Now we have many text messaging apps in the world, including WhatsApp’s top rivals WeChat and Telegram.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the new world order that resulted have increased the importance of messaging apps. Face-to-face meetings have been replaced by video calls and voice calls. Celebrating New Year’s Eve saw this new normal in action as people used technology to connect to their near and dear ones. There was a great surge in the use of WhatsApp and as many as 1.4 billion voice and video calls were made on WhatsApp across different countries in the world on New Year’s Eve.
WhatsApp revealed that in comparison to the New Year’s Eve in 2019, there has been an increase of 50% during 2020 in WhatsApp calls. For the record, 30 December 2020 marks the day where WhatsApp had the highest ever calling in a single day.
However, who is the world’s largest communication provider? Is it WhatsApp, WeChat or Telegram?
Monthly active users
The latest messaging app usage statistics show that WhatsApp has 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, while WeChat has 1 billion users. In comparison, Telegram has a much lesser number of users worldwide and it stands at 400 million monthly active users.
Facebook Messenger’s monthly active users’ number meanwhile stands at 1.3 billion.
Monthly unique users in the United States
When it comes to monthly unique users in the United States, WhatsApp has 25.58 million users, while WeChat has 1.48 million users. Telegram has more monthly unique visitors than WeChat in the US and the number stands at 3.47 million.
Contrary to the wide-ranging popularity that WhatsApp enjoys around the world, it is rather unpopular in the United States. In fact, a lot of Americans had never heard of WhatsApp before it was purchased by Facebook in 2014. However, since 2015 WhatsApp has significantly increased its presence in the US. From 16.2 million users in 2015, it has reached 25.58 million at the beginning of 2021.
Percentage of internet users aged 18 to 64 who use different messenger platforms in the US
25% of respondents in the US in the Statista Global Consumer Survey claimed that they use WhatsApp regularly, while it was 3% for Telegram and WeChat. Facebook Messenger was the most popular with 88% of respondents saying that they use it regularly.
Growth of WhatsApp users in the US (2015-2021)
In the year 2015, the number of users for WhatsApp was 16.2 million in the US, which grew to 18.8 in 2016. Similar growth resulted in 2017 with the number of WhatsApp users growing to 20.5 million. In 2018, the number grew to 22 million and in 2019 it became 23.4 million. The impressive growth continued in the year 2020 and the total number of users become 24.6. Now in 2021, the number of WhatsApp users in the US stands at 25.6 million.
Top Social media messengers around the world
Based on SimilarWeb’s Algorithm integrating current installs from the Google Playstore with active app users, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging tool in 133 countries, while Facebook Messenger is in 75 countries.
WeChat and Telegram are most popular in 3 countries each.
Conclusion
May it be the number of users in the world or the number of countries where it is the top choice, there is no beating WhatsApp. It has become the messenger of choice for the majority of people around the world. The updates and new features that WhatsApp adds frequently makes it the messenger application to beat.
About TeleMessage
TeleMessage captures and retains mobile content, including mobile SMS messages, voice calls, and WeChat conversations from corporate or BYOD mobile phones to ensure compliance with various data protection regulations. The messages are securely and reliably retained within TeleMessage servers or forwarded to your choice archiving data storage vendor.
Our mobile archiving products securely record content from mobile carriers and mobile devices for various ownership models (BYOD, CYOD, and employer-issued). With our multiple archiving solutions, you can always find the right tools or blend for your requirements:
TeleMessage offers cross-carrier and international mobile text & calls archiving for corporate and BYOD phones. Visit our website at www.telemessage.com to learn more about our mobile archiving products.
