Race to the top: the state of chat apps in 5 charts

Wars are being waged around the world for the spoils of the post-SMS world. Even in developing markets like India, SMS is fast losing its way as consumers adopt smartphones en masse and hop onto the chat app bandwagon. Next to Facebook, apps like Whatsapp, WeChat, and Line are perhaps seeing the most staggering user figures:

Sources | Made with Statsy

Unsurprisingly, Whatsapp is the leader among chat apps at 600 million monthly active users (MAUs). Even a supposed laggard like KakaoTalk has numbers many startups would kill for – at 47.8 million users.

If you think those numbers are nuts…

Sources | Made with Statsy

There’s still more room for growth. A lot of room. As a piece of technology, Whatsapp is relatively unspectacular. Less than a third of smartphone users have adopted it. In turn, less than a third of the world’s population are using a smartphone. While pretty much everyone in developed markets have Whatsapp installed on their devices, the same can’t be said for places like Indonesia. But that’s changing fast. The question then is: will these apps continue grabbing smartphone users, or will growth actually slow down?

Widening gap between Whatsapp versus the rest

Sources | Made with Statsy

While it’s impossible to predict the future trajectory of these apps, their past growth is encouraging. The most pronounced trend here is the widening gulf between the number of users on Whatsapp versus the rest. This could be the result of the company’s focus on simplicity and reaching the widest number of users possible with its core messaging experience. “No ads. No games. No gimmicks,” co-founder Brian Acton famously wrote.

Whatsapp’s focus and speed has enabled it to rapidly spread in emerging markets where less expensive phones are commonly held by the less tech savvy crowd. In India, it has shot up to 70 million MAUs without much advertising. Contrast this with Line, which accumulated only 30 million registered users in the country despite heavy marketing.

“In markets like India and Spain, WhatsApp is a significant cost savings for users relative to SMS, which is a key driver for its growth,” Rajeev Chand, head of research at technology investment bank Rutberg & Co, told Wired. “It is the smartphone and messaging equivalent to Skype for international calls.”

This shows a sharp contrast between Whatsapp and others. Whatsapp is a spartan utility that relies mostly on organic growth to spread its influence. With a two-year headstart, it has a first-mover advantage in many countries as the SMS killer, making it an early beneficiary of network effects. And unlike Blackberry Messenger, it rode on the rising popularity of iOS and Android.