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Comment by kwanbix | Hacker News Reader

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.

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...

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

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