WhatsApp hits record 27 Billion daily messages

Mobile messaging application WhatsApp has announced a new record for inbound and outbound messages sent in a single day.

The company tweeted that it processed 27 billion messages –10 billion inbound and 17 billion outbound messages– in a 24-hour period. It, however, didn’t reveal when exactly it received the new record.

WhatApp had handled 18 billion messages – seven billion inbound and 11 billion outbound messages– in its previous record during last year’s New Year Evening.

The massive disparity between inbound and outbound numbers is down to the addition of group messages in Whatapp, which means if someone sends one inbound message in a group it could result in several outbound messages to the other group members.

WhatApp supports Android, Asha, Windows Phone, Symbian and BlackBerry platforms. Unlike its rivals, the company charges users $0.99 per year for unlimited use.

Jan Koum, the WhatApp CEO, recently announced that the company’s monthly active users have been propelled to 200 million, more than Twitter and several other social networking websites.

However the service does face stiff competition in the emerging market countries like China, where Wechat, an instant messaging service of country’s social giant Tencent, boasts over 300 million users. In India Nimbuzz and in Japan Line, both have more over 150 million subscribers.

WhatApp has signed deals with operators across the globe and has partnered with mobile phone giants Nokia to offer Asha 210 feature phone which physically includes a WhatsApp button.

The company’s new record reflects the general shift away from traditional SMS (Short Messaging Service) text being sent by the mobile phone users.

Research firm Informa last month reported that the instant messaging apps outnumbered SMS messaging in 2012, for the first time in its 20-year history. It stated that last year 19 billion instant messages were sent compared with 17.6 billion SMS messages per day and predicted that the figure will reach to 41 billion by the end of 2013.

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Internet messaging outnumbered SMS messaging for first time

The internet messaging has outnumbered SMS messaging for the first time in its 20-year history, the research firm Informa has found.

Thanks to BlackBerry’s flagship messaging service – BlackBerry Messenger – the users of Apple and Google Smartphones can soon send messages over an internet connection free of cost and avoid the fees charged by the telephone carriers.

Informa reports that the popularity of instant messages surpassed SMS messages for the first time last year and it is likely to be doubled by the end of 2013. The report states that 19 billion instant messages were sent in 2012 compared with 17.6 billion SMS messages.

The firm predicted that the Smartphone users will send 41 billion instant messages this year and this figure will grow to 50 billion by the end of next year. On the other hand, the phone users will send only 21 billion in 2014.

SMS service, which was first added to Nokia phones in 1993, remained the standard method for sending short text messages between the phones for two decades. However, in recent years it has met challenges from free instant message applications such as Apple IMessage and WhatsApp.

The reason for increasing popularity of these instant messaging tools is that their potential is not limited to text trade between phones and they allow the users to send group messages and share videos and photos as well.

Recently, BlackBerry has announced that it is planning to expand the BBM service to Android and iOS devices this summer, a move which may prove to eliminate SMS which has already seen significant decreases in use.

The company said BBM service currently has over 60 million monthly active users and more than 10 billion instant messages are sent every day.

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