Messaging apps
Consumer apps

Messaging apps

Section Title: Consumer apps
Table Section Text: None

Messaging app	Owned by	No. of users	Notes

Blackberry Messenger (BBM)	Emtek (Indonesian telco)	63 million monthly active users (January 2018); 60 million total users in Indonesia alone	As of 2017, was still popular in some emerging markets such as Indonesia and Nigeria, and added feature to call an Uber in Indonesia.

Discord	Discord Inc.	130 million unique users (May 2018)	Originally designed for video gaming communities, supports text, image, video and audio communication between users in a chat channel.

Facebook Messenger	Facebook	1.3 billion monthly active users (January 2018)	Blocked in China.

Google messengers	Google	Google has numerous apps with messaging capabilities: Google Hangouts, which replaced the discontinued Google Talk/Google Chat and since 2018 is being split into (Hangouts) Meet videoconference calling service and (Hangouts) Chat; Google Messages (formerly, Android Mesages), Google Voice, Jive Social Intranet Software, and Google Duo video calling.

GroupMe	Microsoft Corporation	12 million registered users (2013)

Hike Messenger	Hike Pvt Ltd.	100 Million registered users (January 2016), active users unknown. Mostly in India	Backed by Tencent and Foxconn

iMessage	Apple Inc.	On 700 million phones

KakaoTalk	Kakao	49 million monthly active users (January 2018),	South Korean "super app"

Kik Messenger	Kik Interactive	15 million monthly active users (August 2017)	Most users are aged 13–24.

LINE	Naver Corporation	203 million monthly active users (January 2018),	First launched in Japan. Has developed strong social and gaming features. A leading mobile gaming app publisher on Google Play.

QQ Messenger	Tencent	843 million monthly active users (January 2018), mostly in China

Riot.im	New Vector	7 million (according to New Vector - April 2019)	Open source client with end-to-end encryption, based on the Matrix open standard. It runs on the web, iOS, Android and desktop, and can connect to any Matrix server.

Signal	Signal Messenger	Open source encrypted communications app that is supported by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The project has supplied its end-to-end encryption technology (Signal Protocol) to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Allo, and Skype.

Skype	Microsoft Corporation	300 million monthly active users (January 2018),

Snapchat	Snap Inc.	260 million monthly active users (January 2018),

Telegram	Telegram Messenger LLP	200 million monthly active users (February 2018),

Threema	Threema GmbH	4.5 million users

Twitter	Twitter	330 million monthly active users on the entire platform (January 2018)	Top user count in U.S., Brazil, Japan and Mexico

Viber	Rakuten	260 million monthly active users (January 2018),	Originated as competitor to Skype with strong VOIP offering.

WeChat	Tencent	1.3 billion monthly active users (January 2018), mostly in China

WhatsApp	Facebook, Inc.	1.3 billion monthly users (January 2018)	Blocked in China.

Zalo	VNG Corporation	35 million active users (December 2017), mostly in Vietnam

Sentence(s)

Over 1.3 billion monthly WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger users and 843 million monthly active QQ Mobile users are using messaging apps in 2018.

final_sentence: Over 1.3 billion monthly WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger users and 843 million monthly active QQ Mobile users are using messaging apps in 2018.