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Comment by cataflam | Hacker News Reader

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cataflam

> outside of the West

you probably mean outside of the USA, it's huge in Europe/UK

(which doesn't contradict your main point)

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It is huge in Latin America.

USA is special because it is the (only?) country where iPhone has more users than Android.

It's crazy how an US company dominates the world's messaging market but not in the US

It’s not uncommon. Orkut back in the day was wildly popular in Latin America and India. WhatsApp is the same. I think users in NA have a lot of high quality options as against those in Asia and LatAm who don’t have much reliable options other than ones developed in NA.

You can get an android phone for about one tenth of what a new iPhone costs. That’s why android dominates lower income markets. Apple decided they just don’t want to be there.

Instagram and iMessage are also US owned services.

It's definitely not the world's messaging market. For instance in Japan and many places in SEA, Line is the standard messenger - one many people probably haven't even heard of. Though it does have a nice play on words - are you on Line?

Well, FB didnt build up the initial user base, just purchased it and grew it from there.

iPhone has more users than Android in Canada and Japan as well. I think some Nordic countries too.

Yeah, huge in Latin America in the sense that a lot (most?) business only have a number that they use with Whatsapp (you can't call or even text them). Is it the same in Europe? Since I am from Latin America I never know if people from other continents use Whatsapp as much as we do, and if when I ask them to use Whatsapp I am imposing a new app or it's what they regularly use.

No. Here in Germany WhatsApp is not even that widespread for businesses. But WA is very big here for personal communication, though Signal comes in second (at least amongst older people, and amongst my circle)

I think Europe is not homogenous enough for this, but in the Netherlands at least, there are plenty of companies that you can't call, email or text, but they'll have some other options: a chatbot, a web form, maybe a Twitter account, and sometimes via WhatsApp indeed.

Not quite, but not too far off.

If you give someone your number, they’ll text you on WhatsApp.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma...

I would have thought he meant "inside of the West". Outside of the West you have other channels.

Russia: Telegram

Taiwan: Line

Japan: Line

By contrast, WhatsApp is best known to me for being used in Europe, Australia, and India.

I think the most used messaging app in Russia now is Max.

According to official statistics it is the most used app since 1 september 2025 /s

Telegram is degraded/blocked in russia depending where you are and how authorities feel today

Japan is mostly Instagram, line, WhatsApp, telegram, in that order, for me.

For business comms drop instagram and move WhatsApp to first.

For Singapore it seems LinkedIn messages are the go to IM for business.

Europe p2p: telegram number one by a huge margin, then WhatsApp. B2b: WhatsApp, period.

Central Asia is Telegram as well.

I think in italy telegram is 2nd to whatsapp

I’m not sure that’s true. I’m fairly certain UK, France, AU, Canada WhatsApp is not vastly more popular than the blue bubble alternative. At least I believe this was the case a few years ago, based on data I’d seen.

France and UK, from personal experience, whatsapp is big, especially for professional use, or friends/family groups.

Blue bubble isn't really a thing ever mentioned in France either, not enough iPhone market share.

> Blue bubble isn't really a thing ever mentioned in France either, not enough iPhone market share.

Nobody uses iMessage. People with iPhone use WhatsApp too.

The user experience of iMessage used to be subpar and now everyone has WhatsApp installed anyway, the feature set is the same and it works on all phone brands so nobody feels like switching.

Same in the UK. The fact that iMessage only works for iOS devices means it's a complete non-starter. What's the point in using a messaging app if you can't add all your contacts to a group? And if you're using a different app for group chats for this reason, then why not use it for 1-1 messaging, too?

I'm in the UK, I don't even know what 'the blue bubble alternative' is (Signal? Telegram?), everyone's on WhatsApp.

I guess that it’s the iPhone’s messenger app? I heard that in that app, fellow iOS users have blue bubble messages and Android / other users have green bubble messages, and all the teens in the US /maybe Canada think it’s lame if you don’t have blue bubbles.

Oh. I remember hearing about that about 15y ago, didn't realise it was still a thing. I suppose because I haven't heard of anyone using iMessage for almost as long!

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