Messaging app battle heats up
The battle of the messaging apps is heating up as global mobile messaging giants, WhatsApp and WeChat plot remarkable growth and add new features to entice prospective users.
In July 2013, China’s Tencent-run mobile messaging platform, WeChat, ramped up its global presence – which included a big marketing push in South Africa.
At the time of the push, WeChat had already clocked a 400 million-plus subscriber base, according its local director, Brett Loubser, which included 50 million users internationally.
In under a month, WeChat’s international subscriber base has boosted to 70 million users, according to Tencent.
Meanwhile, WeChat’s global competitor, WhatsApp, has also raised its game, announcing earlier this week (6 August, 2013) that it has reached 300 million active users on its platform.
The rapid increase of WhatsApp and WeChat users comes as both companies develop and add features to their respective platforms to appeal to increasingly chatty users.
WeChat recently bolstered its position as a “social communications platform” through introducing more media-focussed interactions, while also integrating more widely with social networks such as Facebook.
WhatsApp, on the other hand, moved to more directly compete with feature rich platforms, by introducing asynchronous (“walkie-talkie”) voice messaging – commonly called “push-to-talk”.
In an interview with BusinessTech in July, WeChat SA’s Loubser indicated that “push-to-talk” messaging was one of the key differentiators of the WeChat platform.
| Platform | Users |
| 400 million (70 million international) | |
| 300 million | |
| Skype | 280 million |
| 170 million | |
| BBM | 60 million |
Global app use
According to new app use data by internet market research firm, GlobalWebIndex, WeChat beats out other messaging platforms in terms of presence on smartphones.
27% of smartphone users across the globe downloaded the WeChat app, while only 17% of smartphone users downloaded the WhatsApp application, according to the data.
Other chatting platforms, Skype and Facebook Messenger, are also below WeChat, with 22% of the smartphone population using them, according to GWI.
The GlobalWebIndex is conducted quarterly via self-completion online surveys, thus it is not representative of reported active and registered user numbers by each platform.
Facebook Mobile, which incorporates the Facebook Messenger functionality is found of 44% of smartphones, while the top app is Google Maps with 54% penetration, according to the data.
Penetration of apps on smartphones
More on mobile messaging
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Facebook boosted by mobile ad revenue
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