WhatsApp is “bigger than everyone else” in the South African market. This followed a recent article comparing the available statistics for the number of active users of various messaging services in South Africa. Unfortunately, WhatsApp isn’t willing to disclose its active user statistics on a per-country basis, but there are a number of indicators of the platform’s popularity.
Firstly, WhatsApp is the most popular free app on the iTunes App Store, Google Play, and the Windows Phone Marketplace, outranking even Facebook. World Wide Worx recently ranked Facebook as the largest social network in South Africa with 9.4-million active users in August 2013. No less than 87% of Facebook users in South Africa access the service from their phones, World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck noted.
Secondly, Vodacom and Cell C have revealed that WhatsApp has shown tremendous growth over the last few months. “WhatsApp has significantly more users on our network than any other IM platform and we've seen a pickup in growth in the last two months,” says Vodacom.
Cell C said that they have seen WhatsApp usage increase massively over the last two years. Neither network operator was able to provide specific usage or growth figures, unfortunately.
Thirdly, and most surprisingly, was unofficial and unconfirmed information received from a knowledgeable source which suggested that WhatsApp is possibly double the size of Mxit in South Africa. This means that the number active WhatsApp users in South Africa could be as high as 15-million, and feedback from World Wide Worx boss Arthur Goldstuck provided a lower amount of around 9.4-million users.
Based on their trajectories over the past year, WhatsApp will have overtaken Mxit and will probably also overtake Facebook as the most popular social tool in South Africa.
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