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In 2020, global users were spending over 19 hours per month on the popular chat app. As of June 2021, the popular chat app counted 487.5 million users from India, as well as over 118.5 million users from Brazil, while the United States saw approximately 77 million WhatsApp users.Īs mobile usage trends normalize after the sudden increase experienced in 2020 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, time spent on WhatsApp has experienced a small decrease in 2021. WhatsApp reach is particularly strong in markets outside of the United States, with the regions of Hong Kong and Singapore reporting the largest quarterly growth of WhatsApp downloads on iOS, while Nigeria and Vietnam appeared to be the fastest-growing WhatsApp markets on Android during the fourth quarter of 2021.
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According to Meta’s company data, as of the third quarter of 2020, WhatsApp registered a global volume of 100 billion messages sent through the platform every day, an increase of almost 70 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2017. In January 2022, WhatsApp was the most downloaded chat and messaging app worldwide, amassing approximately 40.6 million downloads across the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. The number of global unique WhatsApp users increased by 22 percent from the beginning of 2020 to the beginning of 2022 and is estimated to reach 2.26 billion unique users by June 2022.
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However, WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton have left the company since mid-2018, citing disagreements over monetization and user privacy. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp was closely related to the vision of more affordable and efficient internet access worldwide. dollars, becoming the company’s most successful messaging app despite having transformed its’ flagship chat portal into a standalone app - Facebook Messenger - in 2010. Launched in January 2009, WhatsApp was acquired in 2014 by social media giant Facebook for approximately 19 billion U.S.
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