In the United States, more so than any other country, Apple is king. It’s not surprising because it is an American company, but I’d reckon without needing to look at any official statistics, that Apple devices are more predominant in the US than anywhere else. As a result, iMessage has become a very popular messaging platform.
WhatsApp might be the biggest messaging app in the world, but it has always faced steep competition from iMessage (and Facebook Messenger) when playing in the US. It still hasn’t beaten out these other options, but the company has just announced reaching a very significant monthly user milestone.
There Are Now Over 100 Million People Using WhatsApp In The United States Every Month
The United States has probably been the hardest market for the people at WhatsApp to break into. It’s an application with about 2 billion active monthly users, yet it has never been able to claim a similar degree of dominance in the United States, the country that it originates from. That’s likely always been a major headache for the team, especially with iMessage and the similarly Meta-owned Messenger having a bigger market share.
Becoming the market leader in the United States might not only be difficult, but it could frankly be impossible, at least in the near future. However, that doesn’t mean that WhatsApp won’t prioritize and celebrate the growth that it is able to achieve. An official blog post from WhatsApp let us in on the fact that there are now 100 million active users of the app in the United States, which is massive.
The post serves little purpose other than celebrating the milestone but it is great to see its acceptance in the United States grow much wider. Personally, I communicate with 95% of my friends and family over WhatsApp because it is a great option regardless of where you live and what kind of phone you use. Being available on PC doesn’t hurt either.
RCS Support On iOS 18 Could Hurt The Cross-Platform Harmony That WhatsApp Has So Tenderly Fostered
If there’s one very obvious thing that WhatsApp holds over iMessage, it is the fact that you can use it on an Android or iPhone. iMessage is only for iOS users, and when attempting to communicate with Android users, it’s as flavorless as texting using regular SMS. Of course, with RCS finally coming to iPhones rather soon, things are bound to change a lot.
iMessage will become a more practical option for chatting with Android users because the experience won’t be as dull as it used to be when you can actually get basic improvements like high-quality media, typing indicators, read receipts, group chats, and more. That would make it a lot less of a headache to converse with people on another mobile platform.
This means that with iMessage with RCS support in iOS 18, you might not need to bother downloading WhatsApp or starting a conversation through there when you can simply do it from iMessage, where you text the rest of your friends. Perhaps Meta realizes this and hopes to demonstrate the popularity of the platform to onboard people before it’s too late.
