It’s no secret by now that WeChat has been growing like crazy. The platform has been rapidly expanding beyond messaging in recent months and this has only served to heighten its popularity.
The app is so popular, it sent over 10 million messages in a one minute time period on the eve of the Chinese New Year.
Over 10 million messages were sent in one minute on the eve of the Chinese New Year
In fact, GlobalWebIndex (GWI), a market research company specializing in online consumer behaviors, reports that WeChat has recorded a record growth rate of 379 percent during the period of Q2 to Q4 2013.
GWI, which interviews 170,000 unique individuals annually, covering 32 markets — representing 89% of the global internet audience and excluding China — surveyed mobile internet users aged 16-64 on their active usage of social platforms during this time period, which showed this vast WeChat growth.
“We are very pleased with the most recent GlobalWebIndex’s survey results. In 2013, WeChat experienced a significant jump in popularity in international markets. Currently, in India we are the second most downloaded app in the App Store; and the most downloaded app in the messaging category. In Italy, we are one of the top 3 apps in the App Store. With our continuous commitment to innovation, we will bring best-in-class user experience to our users, and share more fun and convenient WeChat features for all.” said Poshu Yeung, Vice President of International Business Group at Tencent.
WeChat continues to do well despite growing competition
Of course, we all know that WeChat isn’t without its competition. LINE and Viber are a couple of its biggest, but there are also smaller apps such as South Africa’s Mxit that have recently started to experience growth as well.
WeChat is currently available for Windows Phone, Android, iOS, and other operating systems and can be downloaded for free here.