The consistent popularity of WhatsApp in many countries worldwide has led to others joining the party and has opened the door for other messaging apps like WeChat or Telegram.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw the increasing importance of messaging apps as face-to-face meetings were replaced by video and voice calls. WhatsApp revealed that it had seen an increase of half in calls during 2020 compared to 2019. WhatsApp has seen a rise in popularity, with 1.4 billion video and voice calls made between countries on New Year’s Eve.
WhatsApp has 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, while WeChat currently has 1 billion. Telegram, on the other hand, has approximately 400 million active monthly users around the world. Meanwhile, Facebook’s Messenger has 1.3 billion active users monthly.
In the US, WhatsApp users in 2021 will be around 25.6 million, a remarkable increase from the 16.2million users it had in 2015. This increase in users continued to grow until 2020, reaching 24.6 million users worldwide.
Based on Similarweb’s algorithm that integrates the current number of installations with active app users, WhatsApp is the most used messaging platform in more than 133 countries. Meanwhile, Facebook Messenger is the most used messaging platform in 75 countries.
These text messaging apps are becoming increasingly popular, so capturing and retaining mobile content, such as voice and video calls, is essential for business purposes. Different solutions, such as WeChat archiving, must meet data protection regulations.
For more information about which text messaging app is the largest communication channel provider, here is an infographic from TeleMessage, which offers WeChat call recording, monitoring and archiving solutions.
