WhatsApp was launched in 2010 for Android. Within a matter of only four years, it reached 200 million active users.

As more and more people are drawn to this platform for exchanging messages with others around the globe, businesses are realising that WhatsApp could potentially be a great place to market and sell their products as there are so many people around the world, who are present on this social media platform.

But how many are many?

In this blog, we would be sharing some facts and statistics about WhatsApp that may be useful to you.

• Brian Acton and Jan Koum founded WhatsApp in 2009 after they left their job at Yahoo!
• Brian Acton was not an active member of the WhatsApp team until he convinced five ex-Yahoo! friends, to invest $250,000 in seed funding. It was in October 2009.
• Even during 2009, flat rates for SMS and free minutes were offered by almost every mobile operator, and there was almost no incentive for people in the USA to shift to WhatsApp. The USA is the worst-performing market for Whatsapp till now.
• A new feature of sending photos was added in 2010 to the application and the numbers of users sky-rocketed even when the application was paid
• WhatsApp was among the list of top 20 applications on the App Store in 2011
• Today, WhatsApp reportedly has nearly 2 billion active users

• Nearly 100 billion messages are being sent on the platform daily!  
• The average WhatsApp user spends nearly 38 minutes per day on WhatsApp. That’s 19.4 hours per month.
• Which country has the most WhatsApp monthly active users? That’s a no-brainer! It is India with 390 million!. (In China, WhatsApp is blocked). The combined user base of the top 3 countries in terms of the user base, exceeds half a billion, with nearly 573 million active monthly users in India, Brazil, and the US.
• In 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19.9 billion. Since Facebook bought WhatsApp, its user base increased by 365%. At that time, Facebook was on a mission to become a mobile-first company and make messaging a core service. WhatsApp was the biggest competitor of Facebook Messenger, and it even surpassed Facebook’s subsidiary when it came to the engagement rate.

• When it come to American WhatsApp users, nearly 50% of Americans use WhatsApp daily. An additionally  28% use WhatsApp once a week. That brings the total to 78% of Americans

• Studies show that youth in the age groups of 26 to 35 prefer and are most likely to respond to instant messaging than any other channel of communication. Nearly 27% of all Americans online between the ages of 26 to 35 use WhatsApp. 

• When it comes to gender of users, a study done by the GlobalWebIndex shows that nearly 46% of WhatsApp users tend to be female and the remaining 54% are males
• Among the top 10 countries where WhatsApp is popular, include India, Brazil, USA, Indonesia, Russia, Mexico,  Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

• When it comes to the top fastest growing WhatsApp markets. Russia has grown the fastest at 17 %, India at 16.6%. France at16.6% and Indonesia at 15.1%

• The WhatsApp Messenger was downloaded 39 million times in August 2021 alone. Most of these downloads were from Google Play ( a healthy 29 million downloads) whilst 10 million downloads came from the App store. WhatsApp in fact, was the 4th most downloaded app in September 20221, after TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
• WhatsApp Business on the other hand (WhatsApp Business as the name suggests is for business promotion). WhatsApp Business was downloaded 18 million times across Google Play and App Store in September 2021, with the majority of the downloads coming from Android users.
• Finally, if you are a business leader, wondering if WhatsApp is the platform for marketing your products, here is a statistic that would help you make up your mind : Approximately 175 million people send messages to business accounts on WhatsApp, EVERYDAY!