As instant messaging evolved, 2009 was the year when two former employees of the giant Yahoo! Jan Koum and Brian Acton founded Whatsapp Inc.
Jan Koum and Brian Acton quit their jobs for taking a break from work and after purchasing an iPhone in January 2009, Koum realized that the app store is going to see a huge rise in the app industry.
With this in mind an app was developed which allowed users to update status and show it to people in their network.
Koum immediately chose the name WhatsApp, as it sounded like ‘whats up’, for the app and on February 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc in California.
The App was officially launched exclusively for the apple store in November 2009.
The infographic below shows interesting things you need to know about this Instant Messaging Giant at a glance.
- As of April 2015, WhatsApp has more than 800 million active users.
- India has the largest number of active users on WhatsApp and it formulates more than 10% share of its user base.
- More than 1 million users get registered on WhatsApp daily.
- As of January 2015, 30 billion messages gets sent and received on WhatsApp daily.
- More than 700 million pictures get shared on WhatsApp daily.
- More than 200 million voice notes get shared on WhatsApp everyday
- More than 100 million video messages shared every day.
- Average amount of time spent by users on WhatsApp at a weekly basis is 195 minutes.
- Before Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, Google offered to pay $ 10 billion for WhatsApp
- As of December 2014, the total share of WhatsApp in APAC messaging app market was 13%.
- In April 2015, Forbes predicted that telecom companies will lose about $386 billion between 2012 – 2018 due to OTT apps like Whatsapp
- Nokia series 40 was the first non-smart phone to support WhatsApp
- The oldest device which is currently capable of running WhatsApp is Nokia N95
- WhatsApp launched its web client in January 2015. The web client of whatsapp allows the users to use WhatsApp on their computers (www.web.whatsap.com).
- The Desktop version of Whatsapp is available to only Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone users.
- WhatsApp is the 5thmost downloaded App on Android.
- Apart from facebook, even Twitter had a chance to hire both of WhatsApp’s founders but they didn’t.
- Jan Koum keeps a note from Brian taped to his desk that reads “No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!” To keep them focused on building a pure messaging experience.
- WhatsApp has a total of 55 employees. Out of which only 34 are engineers. That means there is a ratio of 1 developer to 23 million active users
- The average user checks the app approximately 23 times per day.
- An average user ends more than 1000 messages per month on WhatsApp.
- As proved by facebook, WhatsApp is worth more than entire annual budget of NASA, which is 17 billion.
- As of February 2015, WhatsApp is at 6thposition in the list of global brands which rank highest in consumer engagement vis a vis expectations.
Popularity of WhatsApp in Some Countries.
- 84% of mobile phone internet users in Argentina use WhatsApp.
- 31% of social messaging users in Ireland use WhatsApp.
- There are more than 70 million active WhatsApp users in India.
- 36% of mobile web users in United Kingdom use WhatsApp.
- 40% of Italian divorces cite WhatsApp texts as evidence.
- 81% of iPhone users in Italy avail the services of WhatsApp.
- 57% of Indonesian Smart phone users use the services of WhatsApp.
- 17% smart phone users in Finland use WhatsApp.
- 8% of US teens (14-17 years) use WhatsApp on a daily basis.
And there you have it, please share these facts with your friends.