{"id":43816,"date":"2013-08-08T15:19:22","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T13:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=43816"},"modified":"2013-08-08T15:22:39","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T13:22:39","slug":"messaging-app-battle-heats-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/43816\/messaging-app-battle-heats-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Messaging app battle heats up"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In under a month, WeChat’s international subscriber base has boosted to 70 million users, according to Tencent.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

WeChat recently bolstered its position as a “social communications platform\u201d through introducing more media-focussed interactions, while also integrating more widely with social networks such as Facebook.<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Platform<\/strong><\/td>\nUsers
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
WeChat<\/td>\n400 million (70 million international)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
WhatsApp<\/td>\n300 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Skype<\/td>\n280 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Twitter<\/td>\n170 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
BBM<\/td>\n60 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

Global app use<\/h3>\n

According to new app use data by internet market research firm, GlobalWebIndex, WeChat beats out other messaging platforms in terms of presence on smartphones.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Other chatting platforms, Skype and Facebook Messenger, are also below WeChat, with 22% of the smartphone population using them, according to GWI.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

Penetration of apps on smartphones<\/p><\/div>\n

More on mobile messaging<\/h3>\n

Battle of the messaging apps<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tencent triples active chat users<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook boosted by mobile ad revenue<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mobile messaging takes on Facebook<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mobile messenger war<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":43824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1625,45,53,26,6189,6188,2118],"class_list":["post-43816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-bbm","tag-facebook","tag-google","tag-headline","tag-messaging-apps","tag-wechat","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43816"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43914,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43816\/revisions\/43914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}