Facebook-owned WhatsApp, with over an astounding 500 crore downloads on Google Play Store, has become the second non-Google app to have reached the mark. In 2019, Facebook became the first non-Google app to join the 500 crore downloads club. Before that, the only apps to have topped the list or reached this milestone were the pre-installed Google apps like Google Play, Google Maps and others.
As per Android Police, similar to the other Android applications reaching large amounts of installs, this number also includes pre-installed WhatsApp apps bundled with phones like Samsung and Huawei, along with the downloads from the Play Store.
Undoubtedly, WhatsAppalso forms the most popular and used global mobile messenger app worldwide with approximately 1.6 billion monthly active users, going by the Statista reports. It left behind Facebook Messenger at 1.3 billion and WeChat at 1.1 billion users in 2019. In fact, it is also counted in the list of popular social networks, ranking third worldwide after Facebook and YouTube.
Talking about the biggest contributor to this success, South Korea was the fastest-growing WhatsApp market last year, with downloads of the mobile messaging app witnessing a surge of almost 56 per cent in 2019 alone.
Witnessing a fierce competition, Google outshone with close to 850 million downloads, while the social media giant, Facebook, scored nearly 800 million, as per a recent revelation by analytics firm Sensor Tower. However, it is interesting to note that the overall downloads of the Facebook app for the year is higher than that of Google.
Not coming as a surprise, Facebook owns four out of the top five most downloaded apps worldwide that include WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Messenger
