China-based mobile chat app WeChat has reached 100 million registered international users, after doubling its user base in last three months, as the firm looks to rival WhatsApp on the global stage. The messaging service app cited its aggressive global marketing initiatives for its growing international presence. Before this announcement, WeChat declared that its total […]
China-based mobile chat app WeChat has reached 100 million registered international users, after doubling its user base in last three months, as the firm looks to rival WhatsApp on the global stage.
The messaging service app cited its aggressive global marketing initiatives for its growing international presence.
Before this announcement, WeChat declared that its total monthly active users within and outside China have reached 235.8 million users so far.
That was a huge jump by up to 176.8% year-on-year. Included in the figure are the total users of Weixin, WeChat’s local counterpart, which could only be accessed by users in the mainland.
The pace of international growth for WeChat has been impressive. The huge growth in user base came just about a month following WeChat’s announcement that its international users have multiplied to 70 million.
For comparison, US-based rival WhatsApp has recently announced that its total monthly active users had reached 300 million globally. WhatsApps’ volume of international users grew more than 50 million in less than two months. It is just a matter of time before the two competing apps set equal footing on the competitive landscape.
Since its international launch, WeChat has been strong in markets like Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, and Malaysia. It has been downloaded across various OS platforms in different smartphones. Just last month, it was the most downloaded social and messaging app on App Stores across Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, the Philippines, Italy, Spain, Singapore, Thailand, South Africa, and Turkey. According to the UK-based research firm GlobalWebIndex, WeChat is now the fifth most widely used smartphone app worldwide.
“We will continue to bring innovation, for example we launched the first-of-its-kind voice messaging service ‘Hold-to-Talk’ on the app in 2011, and we will continue to develop and enrich our user experience,” said Poshu Yeung, vice president of international business group at Tencent, the company that owns WeChat.
