Surprising WhatsApp Stats (2023 Updated)

Imagine a day without WhatsApp, you can’t call or text people you communicate with on a daily basis through WhatsApp. During brief WhatsApp outages, local businesses reliant completely on WhatsApp for marketing and trading suffer a significant disruption in operations.

Latest WhatsApp statistics indicate the importance of WhatsApp in our daily lives and its prevalent use all over the world. Continue reading to learn some of the surprising WhatsApp stats you may find on the internet today!

WhatsApp Now Has 2 Billion Users Worldwide

With 2 billion active users in over 180 countries, WhatsApp has now been used worldwide for online voice and text communication. Imagine the potential of your reach if you could display your ads to millions of people at once on WhatsApp.

However, for now, it is not possible because Facebook has decided not to move ahead with its initial plan to offer ad placements on WhatsApp–a move.

Though still, thousands of small and local businesses rely on WhatsApp for the digital marketing of their product or service as it is free and has the potential to attract the right people to a particular business.

WhatsApp is Now the Third Biggest Social Media Platform

Everybody is talking about the rise of TikTok, the growing influence of Facebook on teenagers, and people’s obsession with Instagram. Amid this talk of the top social media platforms, WhatsApp has silently climbed the ladder to become the third-largest social media platform on the planet. You can also check global social media statistics here.

In case you are not aware, WhatsApp is even ahead of TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. In terms of the user base, it’s only below Facebook and YouTube.

WhatsApp App Downloads

An app’s popularity is determined by the number of downloads. If we talk about WhatsApp stats regarding its total downloads, it is one of the few apps to be downloaded over five billion times.

Also, WhatsApp is the fourth most installed non-game app across the globe after social media apps TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. With the growing use of smartphones, the number of WhatsApp downloads is expected to increase further.

WhatsApp is Banned in Certain Countries

Yeah, you read it right. WhatsApp is indeed banned in certain countries which include:

• China
• North Korea
• Syria
• Qatar
• United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Chinese and North Korean governments have blocked WhatsApp as they can’t moderate the app while the Emirati and the Qatari governments have banned WhatsApp calling and other Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls because of privacy and national security reasons.

In Syria, the ongoing war is the reason for the unavailability of WhatsApp.

WhatsApp Users by Top 5 Countries

WhatsApp is equally popular in all under-developed and well-established countries. It’s not restricted to the elite class and tech-savvy people only. Since WhatsApp is completely free, it saves people from hefty telephone bills.

Here are the top five countries in terms of the WhatsApp user base:

• India – 487.5 million
• Brazil – 118.5 million
• Indonesia – 84.8 million
• United States – 75.1 million
• Russia – 67 million

WhatsApp stats keep changing, thus, these numbers are likely to fluctuate in the future. Though one thing is sure, the number of WhatsApp users in each country will further increase as not a single similar app developed to this date is even closer to WhatsApp in terms o performance.

WhatsApp Marketing is Getting Common

Did you ever think that WhatsApp will be used to do business dealing someday? Now you can download WhatsApp business to promote your e-commerce store or offline business or connect with other businesses for B2B trading.

WhatsApp’s Business version has been downloaded for more than 5 million times by businesses all over the world. WhatsApp marketing is feasible for small and mid-level businesses looking to amp up their sales via organic means.

WhatsApp Business version also offers an option to create catalogs to let businesses showcase their products in a professional ad distinguishable manner.

WhatsApp Status Usage

Taking the lead from Facebook, WhatsApp introduced the Status feature in 2017 which immediately became popular among its user base. According to Statista, there are half a billion WhatsApp accounts using WhatsApp Status every day.

One of the common use of this feature is to share your thoughts with your contacts. Some business owners even use it to share fresh stock, seasonal discounts, and new offerings with their contacts to boost engagement for their business.

Final Words

WhatsApp continues to grow and get better with every day. With a widespread user base, it’s being used in more than 180 countries. And it will continue to grow and improve over time. As a marketer, how you leverage it for marketing purposes or for promoting your brand can be a game changer. Make sure you make the best use of it.

Need advise from our digital marketing expert? Feel free to get in touch!