While I’m not sure if it is an apples-to-apples comparisons, it is interesting to note nonetheless when considering iMessage and other messaging platforms like WhatsApp.
Today at its shareholder meeting, Apple released some numbers around iMessage and FaceTime calls (thanks MacRumors):
- 40,000,000,000 iMessages/day
- 15,000,000 – 20,000,000 FaceTime calls/day
That’s pretty incredible when the last time they released numbers was January 2013 and they were only processing 2,000,000,000 iMessages/day then.
Compared to WhatsApp’s 50,000,000,000 messages/day, Apple is a little under that but they ride on ahead when you toss in the FaceTime calls as well. It will be interesting to see what the numbers are next year, even though I can’t see them somehow increasing that number 20x again (just the law of large numbers at play there).
Messaging is the big buzz right now in some circles of the technology industry and it is interesting to see how well Apple is doing with their entry on a single, Apple-only platform.
Update: Thanks to Colin Harrington for finding my bad numbers. They have now been updated.