WhatsApp overtakes Facebook Messenger to be top mobile messaging app

Facebook tops the charts in social networking space, but when it comes to social messaging on mobiles WhatsApp walks away as the winner. A new five-country survey by Ondevice reveals that WhatsApp is the new market leader in mobile social messaging. It is a leap ahead in the competitive messaging space which includes giants like Apple’s iMessage, Google’s Hangouts, BBM Messenger, Snapchat, Skype and more.

However, it should be noted that the survey isn’t the most definitive. The survey was conducted on mere 3,759 Android and iOS device owners across the US, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and China. So, this means no Windows Phone users are included. The five nations do not include many European nations. Moreover, the survey question used to come to the consensus was - “Which social messaging app do you use at least once a week?”

WhatsApp emerges as the winner

Overall, social messaging has come a long way as 63 percent of respondents said of using social messaging service at least 10 times a day. According to the survey, 44 percent of the people surveyed said they use WhatsApp at least once per week compared to 35 percent who revealed using Facebook. 28 percent people are said to be using WeChat at least once a week, most of which were from China. There were around 17 percent who used BBM at least once a week and majority were from Indonesia and South Africa.

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Earlier in August, WhatsApp had announced that it had crossed the 300 million monthly active users mark. Looks like, it had also woken to fierce competition in the social messaging space by adding the ability to send voice messages, something found in almost all other similar apps.