WhatsApp has crossed a new milestone, claiming it now has over 900 million monthly active users all over the world. The popular instant messaging app’s CEO, Jan Koum, announced the news via his official Facebook page.
The number is impressive considering the Facebook-owned WhatsApp had 800 million users back in April 2015. This means the tool has gained almost a 100 million users in less than 5 months. It took 8 months for the company to obtain its previous 200 million consumers.
The rapid increase in people accessing WhatsApp on an everyday basis will probably go a long way in asserting the messaging client’s dominance over its rivals. Interestingly, one of its main opponents is Facebook’s Messenger app, which had racked up nearly 700 million monthly active users in June this year.
WhatsApp was acquired by the social media giant for $19 billion back in 2014. The investment seems to be paying off since Facebook now has two applications that have been downloaded over a billion times in the Google Play Store; its own and WhatsApp, which achieved the landmark in March this year.
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It’s only the second non-Google app to have reached that number. According to stats revealed by the company in January 2015, WhatsApp is used to send a staggering 30 billion texts a day. That puts the tool ahead of the estimated 20 billion SMS texts sent out on a daily basis.
WhatsApp has been faced with a lot of competition ever since its launch back in 2009. It’s currently battling it out with applications such as Line and India-based Hike. The latter recently announced it was being used to send over 20 billion messages a month, an impressive feat for a relatively new player.