WhatsApp Crosses 100 Million Monthly Active Users in the US

WhatsApp has crossed a new usage milestone in the US with 100 million monthly active users as of July 2024. That’s almost one-third of the country’s population, which was estimated at 334 million as of last year.

While WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in the rest of the world with over 2 billion users globally, it’s been struggling to get ground in the US. With Apple being the top smartphone manufacturer in the country, the company’s iMessage app is still far more popular. However, Meta believes that cross-platform availability makes WhatsApp a superior service.

“This milestone has been a long time coming and it proves that WhatsApp is the solution to the cross platform divide in America,” the WhatsApp team said in a blog post. “No matter if you have an iPhone or Android, people want private and secure messaging that works well for everyone and that’s what we do best.”

The “cross-platform divide” the WhatsApp team is referring to is a not-so-subtle hint at Apple’s iMessage not playing nice with Android users. This is very much a first-world problem, but as of today, group conversations that mix iPhone and Android users are not a great experience as iMessage falls back to SMS when an iPhone user messages an Android. This should get better once Apple adds support for Rich Communications Services (RCS) on iOS 18 later this fall, though iPhones will continue to use green bubbles for RCS messages and blue bubbles for iMessage conversations.

Last year, the EU Commission designated WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger as two  “Number Independent Interpersonal Communications Services” (NIICS) that need to be regulated under the Digital Markets Act. This means that the two messaging apps will need to become interoperable with other messaging services, and a recent WhatsApp beta showed traces of the upcoming interoperability support.

iMessage, however, has avoided DMA regulation following an in-depth investigation by the EU Commission. While the iMessage walled garden will remain, the EU regulator did force Apple to allow alternative app stores and browser engines on iOS in the EU.