15 years of WhatsApp – the world’s most important messenger celebrates its birthday
In 2012, around 60 billion short messages were sent in Germany alone. This refers to the good old SMS, which had blossomed from a mere by-product for status information into a successful product worth billions for mobile phone providers. The fall of this technology happened much faster than the rise; by 2014 the numbers had already been more than halved. The reason for this development is quickly identified and is directly related to messenger services – especially WhatsApp. The app from the company of the same name, which was founded by two former Yahoo employees in California, first came to the iOS and Android app stores almost exactly 15 years ago. All you needed to use it was a smartphone and a mobile number.
At first hardly any users…
In February 2009, one could hardly have imagined how big the messenger would become. You first had to pay 99 cents in order to be able to send as many messages as you wanted – if you found other users who had also switched to WhatsApp. However, five years after publication, the app had already reached around 500 million users and was on its way to becoming the new communication standard between smartphones.
then a billion dollar takeover
The rapid growth was accompanied by close scrutiny from other industry giants, who not only saw threats to their own business model, but also identified much greater potential. Although it is not known who was thinking about buying the provider, Facebook was particularly determined and put $19 billion on the table for WhatsApp. Two years later it was announced that there were now more than a billion active users. No matter what data protection concerns, controversies and criticism there were, more and more users relied on the app, which is now operated by Facebook and Meta.
Constant development, two billion users
A lot has happened since then, among other things, the service has long since relied on end-to-end encryption, is available natively for Mac and Windows, offers telephony and has become an important communication channel for many companies. With two billion users worldwide (as of January 2024), it remains the almost undisputed market leader – Facebook Messenger, for example, has less than half as many users. The Market shares of WhatsApp even increased, with particularly successful countries being Germany (95.5 percent), Austria (94.4 percent) and Switzerland (95.9 percent). In Brazil, 98.9 percent of smartphone users actively use WhatsApp. However, the messenger never really caught on in the USA or Canada; 41.2 percent is one of the lowest values in the world.
Recent news surrounding WhatsApp included the launch of a new native Mac app, WhatsApp for iPad as well as a decision by the EU that Apple’s iMessage is too insignificant to have to create a connection to other messengers within the framework of the Digital Market Act – which would have been WhatsApp, among others.