400,000,000. That is the number of users who use Whatsapp every month.
In case you are not 1 of the 400,000,000 users who used Whatsapp every month, WhatsApp is a simple chatting app which allows users to send text messages free over the Internet from a mobile user to another mobile user. Over the last few years, it has evolved to allow users to send photos, videos and audio messages to one another.
It is worth noting that the 400 million monthly active users do not include those that are inactive, suggesting that the company definitely have more than 400 million registered users.
Today, we’re proud to announce that because of you, WhatsApp has reached a milestone that no other mobile messaging service has achieved: 400 million monthly active users, with 100 million active users added in the last four months alone. This isn’t a count of people who just registered for WhatsApp – it’s the number of people who are actively using the service every single month, wrote Whatsapp’s cofounder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jan Koum.
WhatsApp’s closest competitor, the Japanese messaging platform LINE on the other hand, claimed to have 300 million registered users, though the company would not reveal how many of these users are active. Other than LINE, there is also China’s WeChat, which claims to have 270 million registered users and KakaoTalk of South Korea with 130 million users.
“We want to steer the conversation to be about active users, not registered users,” WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum told AllThingsD. “We’re a bit fed up and frustrated about people talking about registered users. We think it’s important for us as a leader in the space to speak up and be ethical.”
The company also gave updated stats on its daily message flow: WhatsApp’s users are now sending 16 billion messages per day on average, receiving 32 billion, and sending 500 million images per day.
In an interview with Wall Street Journal, Jan Koum attributes the steady growth to his company’s “focus on messaging.” Unlike competing messaging apps that make money with advertising or games, “we want to get out of the way. We want to let people have a conversation.”
Whatsapp is building a 100 year old company
For the messaging app, it makes money through a simple one off fee: the app is free for the first year but costs 99 cents a year thereafter. The revenue is used to sustain the team of 50 employees.
According to CEO Jan Koum, WhatsApp has “no plans to sell, IPO, exit, [get new] funding.”
“Despite the fact that we’re able to monetize today, we’re not focused on monetization. We view monetization as five, 10 years down the road. We’re trying to build a sustainable company that’s here for the next 100 years.”
Currently, all users are attracted to WhatsApp without any marketing spent.
LINE on the other hand, has been actively launching marketing campaign around its target market in bid to get more users onboard. They even released this tear jerking video advertisement targetted at Thailand users.
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