Messaging App War: WeChat and Line are Leaving KakaoTalk Behind; WhatsApp Should be Worried

This month we received word from messaging apps KakaoTalk and Line that they have reached ever increasing user-base milestones. The messaging app battleground is definitely one to look out for as WhatsApp claims that it is now bigger than Twitter in terms of monthly active users.

Looking at the rapid growth of the popular chat apps, they all have the possibility of becoming bigger than Twitter ¹ in the future. Let’s take a look at how close the chat apps are to reaching the big numbers:

We’re going to focus on WeChat, Line, and KakaoTalk since their roots are in Asia. Looking at the graph we compiled below, we can see that it took Line six months to reach its first 10 million users, while KakaoTalk needed twice that time to achieve the same number of users.

To get to the 50 million user mark, Line needed 13 months while KakaoTalk needed 27 months. How about WeChat? It took the China-made app less than a year to reach that particular milestone. While WeChat has the biggest registered base, only 70 million of those are outside China, so it’s losing the global battle to Line in a pretty big way.

Leaving KakaoTalk behind

What’s interesting is how Line and WeChat both left behind KakaoTalk in terms of user acquisition after the 50 million mark. Line needed about six months to double that tally, and another six months to double that number again to get to 200 million users, as we reported earlier this week.

WeChat impressively needed only three months to double that 50 million number up to 100 million. The app then went global as WeChat (known as ‘Weixin’ in China) and grabbed its 200 millionth user six months afterwards. It’s almost been a year since that time and a lot of people speculate that the app is going to acquire its 400 millionth user very soon.

So since reaching the 50 million mark, it took Line 12 months to quadruple that number to 200 million. In 13 months, WeChat grew its user-base by 600 percent to 300 million. KakaoTalk needed a similar timeline to get to just its 100 millionth user.

Late start?

Original image credit: csa.com

There are a few explanations as to why that happened. First is how Line and WeChat took the initiative to expand their apps before KakaoTalk did. WeChat went global in April 2012; Line saw 50 percent of its user-base was from outside Japan last October, but now that’s up to 70 percent. KakaoTalk just started to be more aggressive in its expansion outside of its native Korea around November of last year.

Some other aspects probably come into play. Line launched its desktop version in March last year, which helped people to adopt the chatting app with computers (or to use it surreptitiously while at work!). Some started to use such social messaging apps as a replacement to the old Yahoo Messenger. KakaoTalk finally released its desktop app last month. WeChat has a browser-based web app for laptop and desktop PC users.

Financial matters

Overpowering WhatsApp