Regional Messaging App Preferences

Discussions highlight WhatsApp's dominance as the primary messaging app in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and other regions outside the US, contrasting it with iMessage and SMS usage primarily in the US.

📉 Falling 0.3x Politics & Society
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#7086
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Activity Over Time

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Keywords

US WA SF SMS FB SIM twitter.com sinch.com YouTube LINE whatsapp imessage sms messenger telegram wechat europe countries messaging uses

Sample Comments

mkl95 Apr 3, 2024 View on HN

Whatsapp is kinda ubiquitous in some EMEA countries where stuff like iMessage is virtually unused

nicbou Sep 27, 2023 View on HN

iMessage is pretty rare. Europe is on WhatsApp

qwerty9876 Mar 12, 2019 View on HN

WhatsApp is a non-US thing. In Europe, it has de facto replaced SMS

chrischen Apr 23, 2018 View on HN

I think this is country specific. Whatsapp is used heavily in Europe and parts of Asia.If I didn't have friends in other countries I'd just be using Facebook Messenger and iMessage as well. In the US it's predominantly Facebook Messenger.

floatboth Aug 29, 2020 View on HN

That must be a US-only thing. In the rest of the world everyone uses WhatsApp/Telegram/Viber/etc (WeChat in China) and iMessage is not popular at all.

fasicle Jan 24, 2020 View on HN

WhatsApp is massive in Europe, I'm currently in Spain and nobody uses anything else.

pier25 Jul 8, 2019 View on HN

Same here. Most iPhone users around me use Whatsapp. I don't live in the US.

eddd-ddde Apr 19, 2024 View on HN

Honestly it's weird how this is a thing in the US. In what I believe is most of the world, people just use WhatsApp, no sms, no iMessage.Same is true for any demography as well. Maybe add some Instagram for the younger groups.

bryant Dec 14, 2024 View on HN

There are many examples all over the world. Plenty of countries have people that have attachments to apps like whatsapp, telegram, etc.All of my friends in brazil, for instance, are entirely attached to whatsapp.I agree with the other reply. Where do you live? I'm surprised that you haven't encountered any. Every city in the US that I visited and every city that I visited internationally has people that attach themselves to one of either whatsapp, telegram, imessage, etc.(I&#x

withinboredom Dec 11, 2023 View on HN

Is that a US thing though? Most of my contacts use WhatsApp.