Categories: Technology

Happy Birthday WhatsApp! For your birthday, here are the most important facts about the app

Today is WhatsApp’s birthday and has been around for 15 years. The world’s most popular messenger app has revolutionized digital communication and many now use the app every day. The most important facts and figures for the anniversary.
Julia Neukomm

Many dramas have happened on WhatsApp: arguments, ghosting, breakups, blocking, messages sent to the wrong people or the WhatsApp status being misunderstood. But friendships have also been strengthened via WhatsApp, love messages have been written, people have fallen in love and the status of relationships has been determined via messages.

The app was launched 15 years ago and changed global communication behavior forever. Here you will find an overview of the most important figures and facts.

How it all started…

WhatsApp was officially founded on February 24, 2009 as a chat app service by two former Yahoo employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum. Initially, the app was only available for iOS and mainly focused on status reports.

However, users soon began using the app as an instant messaging service, laying the foundation for what the app would become. WhatsApp 2.0 integrated the messaging feature, which would later become the defining feature of the app. WhatsApp 2.0 was an immediate success and quickly reached 250,000 active users.

That same year, WhatsApp integrated multimedia messaging and was also released for Android in 2010. A year later, a billion messages were sent every day. At the beginning of 2013, WhatsApp had 200 million active users.

Facebook acquired WhatsApp in February 2014 for $19 billion, which remains one of the largest technology acquisitions in history.

WhatsApp is now the most popular messaging service in more than 100 countries. WhatsApp is over two billion active users and is one of the few apps that does that more than five billion times have been downloaded.

The WhatsApp users

WhatsApp could be used worldwide by mid-2023 2.78 billion show active users. The development of the number of users has increased steadily since the company was founded.

Last year, WhatsApp’s global user base consisted of 47.1 percent female users and 52.8 percent male users.

According to data.ai intelligence, WhatsApp users worldwide spent an average of 16 hours and 45 minutes per month 33.5 minutes per day with the app.

Sent messages

According to a tweet from Will Cathcart, the current head of WhatsApp, more than 100 billion messages sent via WhatsApp.

In 2023, the number of messages sent daily will increase 140 billion increased. This means that last year approximately 5.833 billion messages were exchanged per hour, 97 million messages per minute and approximately 1.6 million messages per second.

App downloads

According to data from AppFigures, the app became popular in October 2023 alone 36 million times downloaded. This is well below the peak of 63 million downloads in January 2020, but above the 32 million downloads in September 2023. Globally, WhatsApp was the fourth most downloaded app in October 2023. Since the launch of WhatsApp, the app has been downloaded more than five billion times on iOS or Android.

The countries with the most WhatsApp users

WhatsApp is available in 180 countries. The app is especially popular in one country: India 535.8 million monthly users the highest number of WhatsApp users worldwide.

Countries where WhatsApp is banned

Six countries have banned the use of WhatsApp: China, the United Arab Emirates, Cuba, Iran, Syria and North Korea. Most of these countries ban WhatsApp for security reasons, while other countries want to promote local telecommunications companies.

WhatsApp in Switzerland

WhatsApp is also the most used social platform in Switzerland, followed by Facebook and Instagram. Not only is the messaging service the most used, the app is also one of the most popular brands in Switzerland. According to the “Brand Indicator Switzerland” 2024 ranking, WhatsApp is the most popular brand among Swiss people after Migros. Last year the courier service even took first place.

Julia Neukomm

Source: Watson

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