WhatsApp hits 1.5 Bn MAUs mark globally, no fresh data for India

Ever since acquired by social media behemoth Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion, instant messaging platform WhatsApp has been springing up like a mushroom. On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his wholly owned freeware product has crossed 1.5 billion mark as far as monthly active users (MAUs) are concerned.

Zuckerberg, who took his social media platform to announce the yearly report, said that WhatsApp now has 1.5 billion monthly active users (MAUs) who are exchanging nearly 60 billion messages on a single day, while his another company Instagram is now the most popular story-sharing product, followed by the former.

Meanwhile, at present, multiple media reports have been emphasising for more than over a year that WhatsApp has over 200 million monthly active users in India. However, we believe that MAUs of the chat product should be easily in the range of 250-270 million.

Since India added over at least 10 million smartphones users in 2017 alone. Our guesstimate hints that out of 10 million smartphones at least 5 million phones must have downloaded WhatsApp.

For an instance, online players had sold out about 3 million smartphones in September quarter of last year alone. Importantly, the company or Zuckerberg has not revealed any data on Indian market since February 2017.

Facebook also disclosed that Instagram and WhatsApp are the No. 1 and No. 2 most popular products with 300 million daily active users each, followed by Snapchat who stands at 178 million MAUs.

Facebook, which is a home to around 250 million users in India, claims that more than 2.1 billion people now using Facebook every month and 1.4 billion people using it daily. In 2017, its business grew 47 per cent year-over-year to $40 billion, said the Facebook post.

Also Read: Indians shared 20 billion messages via WhatsApp on New Year eve

Additionally, the company makes sure the information users see on Facebook comes from broadly trusted and high-quality sources, in order to counter misinformation and polarisation.

Preventing false news, hate speech, and other forms of abuses is another focus for the firm. To protect the security and integrity of its platform, Facebook is investing in both people and technology.

Taking India on a serious note, WhatsApp recently launched its Business app in the country.

The business facing chat interface is a free-to-download Android app for small businesses that lets them display information including email, description or store addresses among others.

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