Whatsapp In The Middle East And Africa Region

Popular IM WhatsApp announced via a blog post that they now have half a billion active users throughout the world. Apart from the impressive user stats, the 5 line blog post also highlighted a high rate of multimedia sharing throughout the platform:

“Thanks to all of you, half a billion people around the world are now regular, active WhatsApp users. In the last few months, we’ve grown fastest in countries like Brazil, India, Mexico, and Russia, and our users are also sharing more than 700 million photos and 100 million videos every single day. We could go on, but for now, it’s more important that we get back to work – because here at WhatsApp, we’re just getting started.”

At the time of Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp, the 5 year old IM was said to have 450 million users and registering 1 million new users daily. It seems this growth trend hasn’t slowed down as WhatsApp has added 50 million more users since the Facebook purchase in February 2014.

500,000,000 active users is significant for WhatsApp because it’s halfway towards that 1 billion milestone that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg referred to when he announced the WhatApp purchase. WhatsApp’s focus is still on growth and they are doing one hell of a job at it.

Middle East and Africa
According to a February 2014 report by Global Web Index, it found 7 million people in North America now use the app compared with its active user base in Asia (101 million), Europe (45 million), Latin America (38 million), and the Middle East/Africa (15 million).

In terms of active use—those who say they have used the app in the last month, rather than just having it installed on their phone—WhatsApp can now boast more than 200 million users globally. That’s an impressive 175% rise in 2013.

In a related report, Global Web Index found 25% of 16-19-years-olds worldwide with mobile internet access say they actively use WhatsApp each month.

The analysis also found that the app had a 160% increase in use by teens with mobile internet access in 2013.

However, teen usage varies significantly by region. In the Middle East and Africa, some 69% of the teen mobile audience is using WhatsApp, compared with just 4% in North America.