WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging app, in August reached another important milestone: 900 million active monthly users. It is an extraordinary result indeed, considering that the app created in 2009 by Jan Koum (who is now a Facebook board member) only during the past four months has earned 100 million users. And what are the results obtained by the other messaging services?
Facebook, with 1.5 billion users, is the leader, while Messenger reaches seven hundred million. In April, the last public data reported that the monthly active users (MAU) of the popular app were 800 million. Obviously the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook in 2014 (costed more than $21 billion) has largely contributed to the success of WhatsApp, which was already much appreciated by users all over the world.
Beyond that, also the usage of Android (which is the mobile operating system more used in the world) has greatly facilitated the success of WhatsApp. And statistics seem to confirm the importance of the cooperation between WhatsApp and Android. A recent survey published by Global Web Index shows that 73% of WhatsApp users access the app through Android.
The first signs of this unstoppable success could already be seen in March, when WhatsApp reached a billion installations on devices with Google os. Again, clearly, Facebook was the first to overcome this record, but then came WhatsApp. And the numerous updates that are regularly introduced, will only increase the growth of the app.
But after all these remarkable results, everyone seems curious to find out how Facebook can monetize the success of WhatsApp, and a huge debate has been opened among experts. The question arises because the positions of Zuckerberg and Koum seem to diverge. Infact Jan Koum and his team stated that their app won’t have “No ads! No games! No gimmicks!”, while months ago Mark Zuckerberg declared that “there are many clear ways that we can monetize”. So, who will win? We just have to wait to see what happens.