India is largest market for WhatsApp by far with 34 crore users

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Sep 14, 2019: India is the largest market for the popular messaging app WhatsApp. The Facebook-owned chat app has more than 34 corer active users in the country, way ahead of the second-ranked Brazil (9.9 crore users) and the third-ranked US (6.8 crore users), according to a study by research firm emarketer quoted by Australian publication adweek.com.

 

The Facebook-owned WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in the world, has been posting rapid gains in popularity in India in the last few years. The data revolution unleashed by Reliance Jio has resulted in a rapid rise in the number of internet users in the country. India has about 50 crore smartphones users and it is estimated that about 68% of them use WhatsApp. Reliance Jio’s immensely popular feature phones came with WhatsApp pre-installed. It is reported that WhatsApp may soon launch WhatsApp payment service India. The tool is still in the testing phase.

The journey of WhatsApp in India was not a smooth one. It had to face a lot of criticism as the messaging platform was used by some users to circulate fake news. The Indian government had asked the company to find ways to curb the spread of fake news on its platform.

WhatsApp has been introducing new features for its users around the world. Recently, the platform launched a new feature that allows users to listen to audio without having to open the lock screen. However, this feature is only available for iOS users at the moment. Earlier, they had also released a fingerprint lock feature on the Android version of the application. The feature was first released for the iOS platform in February. It allows users to unlock WhatsApp using FaceID or Touch ID on iPhone.