WhatsApp 2nd non-Google app to reach 5 bn installs on Android

WhatApp recently became one of only a handful of apps to reach five billion downloads. Most applications to reach the landmark are pre-installed Google apps that come bundled with Android. Last year, Facebook managed to reach five billion installations because of its partnerships with Samsung and other smartphone original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Like all prior Android applications to reach this milestone number of installations, the numbers don’t include downloads from the Play Store alone but pre-installed copies of the app on smartphones.

WhatsApp is also the most popular global mobile messenger app in the world. According to Statista, it has approximately 1.6 billion monthly active users, outranking both Facebook Messenger and WeChat’s users, which stand at 1.3 billion and 1.1 billion, respectively.

South Korea emerged as the fastest-growing market for WhatsApp on Google’s Play Store with total downloads of the mobile messaging app increasing to almost 56 percent in 2019. Additionally, Google also unseated Facebook as the number one publisher of mobile apps. In Q4 2019, Google amassed around 850 million downloads with the social media platform falling nearly 50 million short.

While Google raked in close to 2.3 billion downloads in 2019, it wasn’t enough to hit Facebook’s three billion yearly downloads. According to Sensor Tower data, Facebook-owned four of the five most downloaded apps worldwide in 2019: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.

The second most downloaded app in 2019 was ByteDance-owned video-sharing app TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin. WhatsApp is also set to embrace a tonne of new features in 2020, including a dark mode, which will include a native dark theme for users.