Comparison of messaging apps

For example, I have called them “divine favours,” “God-sent,” and a curse to big-time cell phone carriers.Messaging apps are indeed an indispensable form of day-to-day communication for hundreds of millions of people, especially in the developing countries. Tens of billions of messages are sent out every day, with or without accompanying voices and photos. LINE, […]

For example, I have called them “divine favours,” “God-sent,” and a curse to big-time cell phone carriers.
Messaging apps are indeed an indispensable form of day-to-day communication for hundreds of millions of people, especially in the developing countries. Tens of billions of messages are sent out every day, with or without accompanying voices and photos. LINE, which is just one of these apps, has been downloaded more than 205 million times since its introduction in June 2011. These tools have rendered their built-in counterparts in devices such as Blackberry and iPhone antiquated.
Many developments in tech business have also underscored the importance of messaging apps, the least of which is not the acquisition by Facebook of WhatsApp for $19 billion dollars on February 19, 2014. Other high tech biggies, such as Samsung Electronics, SK Telecom (South Korea), Google, and Tencent Holdings (China) have tried to cash in, in some cases, successfully, on the messaging apps bandwagon, mostly via acquisition. Prior to its successful acquisition of WhatsApp, Facebook acquired text messaging start-up Beluga in 2011, an app that seems to have fizzled out. Google, Tencent, and Facebook had each attempted to acquire WhatsApp, Inc. before Facebook eventually succeeded. WhatsApp has been the gold standard in the messaging apps business, at least as far as the number of monthly active users (MAU) is concerned. Facebook has also significantly beefed up its home grown messaging app “Messenger,” by endowing it with calling capabilities and voice mail. Tencent, the Chinese IT company, owns WeChat. In 2012, SK Telecom acquired MadSmart, the producer of the popular messaging app TicToc. Yahoo! Japan was said to have purchased a 50% stake in the Japanese subsidiary of Kakao Corp, a South Korean company, in October of 2012. Samsung preemptively developed its own texting app, ChatOn, in 2011, and has also attempted partnership with the MessageMe, a company that eventually joined Yahoo! on October 3, 2014.
In her most recent annual report on Internet trends, which was “published” in a 196-slide PowerPoint presentation on 27 May 2015, Mary Meeker, a prominent venture capitalist and a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (Silicon Valley, California, USA), and also a former Morgan Stanley analyst, suggests a future filled with messaging apps. According to Meeker, “Messaging apps will likely take over our mobile lives, that is, if they haven’t already.” This is obviously consistent with my “divine favour” metaphor. Meeker thinks that mobile messaging may soon evolve into a central hub of communication for users. Her report was presented last week Wednesday at Recode’s Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California (USA). Meeker has been publishing her slide presentations on Internet trends since 1995, an event that has turned her into an influential voice in the tech world; which is understandable if her ability to predict is coupled with her venture capitalist portfolio. Her forecasts are sometimes used by tech and venture caps as roadmaps for the direction in which to develop and fund.
I find Meeker’s 2015 report to be a bit interesting and useful, and I might filter out the essence of the report into next week’s article in this column in Daily Trust. For this week, only sections relevant to messaging apps will be referenced. Meeker identified the following features of messaging apps: asynchronous yet instant, expressive yet fast, engaging yet user controlled, easy yet productive, simple yet 24/7, real-time yet replayable, current yet evergreen, accessible yet global, mobile yet distributed, instant yet secure, personal yet mainstream, and casual yet professional.
According to Statista, The Statistics Portal (www.statista.com <http://www.statista.com>), the most popular global mobile messenger apps as of March 2015, based on MAU (in millions), are as follows: WhatsApp (700), QQ Mobile (576), Facebook Messenger (600), WeChat (500), Skype  (300), Viber (236), LINE (181), Kik (200), BlackBerry Messenger (91), and Kakao Talk (48). Meeker has her own list of the ten most used global apps, which was published in her report of last week. With the numbers in parenthesis representing the MAU in millions, the apps in Meeker’s list, in decreasing order of ranking are: Facebook, WhatsApp (800), Messenger (600), Instagram, LINE (205), Viber, Kakao Talk (48), Clash of Clans, WeChat (549), and Twitter. Of these, 6 are messaging apps: WhatsApp, Messenger, LINE, Viber, Kakao Talk, and WeChat. Snapchat, which is not on the top-ten list, is estimated to have an MAU of 100 million.
Besides MAU, another metric for comparing apps is the frequency of use of an app, or the number of sessions. For this, Meeker has Kakao Talk leading with 55 sessions. The others are WhatsApp (37), WeChat, (29), VK (29), LINE (26), Viber (20), Facebook (20), Clash of Clans (16), Instagram (12) and Messenger (8). This metric is a measure of a user’s attachment to a platform, and those who know Koreans very well will not be surprised that Kakao Talk significantly leads the pack for this metric.
Note that TicToc, Samsung’s ChatOn, and MessageMe have disappeared from messaging radar, at least, as per the top-ten ranking. Regarding the monetization of the messaging apps, not much is available for a significant number of them, as the revenue generated is not published.  Such is the case for the world leader WhatsApp, which cost Facebook $19 billion to acquire, as well as Facebook’s own Messenger and the Chinese company Tencent’s WeChat. On the other hand, South Korea’s Kakao Talk and Japan’s LINE reportedly generated annual revenues of $853 million and $922 million, respectfully, last year.