Nimbuzz: A VOIP And Messaging App Has Saudi Arabia Among Its Top Users

Nimbuzz, the cross-platform messaging and VOIP service has announced that it has hit the 150 million user milestone. So starting  way back in 2006, Nimbuzz, a startup originally from the Netherlands concentrated on smartphone apps in the emerging markets paying attention to feature phones which use Java apps. And that strategy is paying off. Today it announces that it has just passed 150 million users globally and is doubling its users year on year.

Nimbuzz had 50 million users in August 2011, 100 million in August 2012 and now it has 150 million ahead of August 2013. That is impressive. The strongest countries for Nimbuzz this year are India and Saudi Arabia. India has around 25 million users while users in Asia are around 78 million. The rest are from Africa (16 million), Europe (10 million) and US (9 million). For the stats heads amongst you here they are:

• More than 150 million users in 200 countries: Asia (78 million including middle east); Africa (16); Europe (10); USA (9) • 100-percent year-over-year growth • More than 5,000 devices supported • More than 1 billion minutes of Nimbuzz P2P, NimbuzzOut and SIP calls made per month • More than 102 billion messages sent and received per month • Android devices account for more than 35% of all active and new users. This may be so because emerging markets have a rather strong Android penetration.

Nimbuzz is available on all major platforms such as BlackBerry 10, Android, iOS, Symbian, Windows Phone, and J2ME, as well as Windows and Mac computers. It’s pre-loaded onto all local OEM handsets in India apart from Nokia, Samsung, LG.

Nimbuzz CEO Vikas Saxena says the appeal of Nimbuzz to users in these markets is that it is as a “single platform capable of handling immense amounts of data for little or no cost at all.”

They have released the below infographic highlighting their growth