- India currently has 340 Million WhatsApp users
- India currently has more than 450 million smartphone users and by 2022 it could reach 700 million
- The increased use of WhatsApp has been fuelled by low-cost internet entrants like Jio
WhatsApp is one of the world’s most popular messaging apps and retains India’s largest number of users with 340 million users. With 99 million, Brazil is second and the US is third with 68.1 million.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. ranks third for use with WhatsApp because users here have adopted other technologies such as Facebook Messenger and iMessage.
The largest net user market for WhatsApp is India. Brazil, Argentina and India are the top three markets in terms of user penetration among smartphone users, where over 90% of smartphone users in each country will use WhatsApp this year.
India has been able to accumulate such a large number of WhatsApp users, partly because the platform can be used on some feature phones, such as the popular JioPhone,” said Jasmine Enberg, senior analyst at eMarketer. “India’s broad user base has also made it a testing ground for new capabilities in WhatsApp, including a payment system.
She even added that since 2018, the company has been testing the service in India and this year, pending regulatory approval, is expected to launch nationwide.
The US is 3rd for net WhatsApp users at 68.1 million, but that’s just 7.7 percent of all users in the 18 countries they’re currently tracking. That’s because regular SMS, Facebook Messenger and iMessage have been widely used to hold back adoption of WhatsApp.
The two applications, however, are not mutually exclusive. Four of WhatsApp’s top 10 user penetration countries among 2019 smartphone users— Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Italy — are also among Messenger’s top 10 user penetration countries. And in the United Kingdom, where 53.5% of smartphone users are expected to use Messenger this year, 60.1% will use WhatsApp.
This year, we estimate that the total number of messaging app users around the world will rise to 2.52 billion people by 12.1 percent. Next year, growth will slow to 7.3 percent, reaching users of 2.70 billion.
The messaging platform had revealed in 2017 that in India it had reached 200 million users and over the next three years the service will reach over a billion users.
A Cisco study says that by 2022 there will be more than 800 million users of smartphones. India has more than 450 million smartphone users, according to Counterpoint Research, and by 2022 it could reach 700 million.
WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by Yahoo’s former employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum. When they went there to apply, both of them were rejected by Facebook.
In 2014, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook as its largest $19 billion acquisition. After acquiring it, Facebook added a lot of features including voice calls and stories.
Google, WhatsApp, YouTube Become Most Trusted Brands In India
