WhatsApp’s rivals Signal and Telegram are reportedly making big strides. Over the past few months, the Signal and Telegram apps have outperformed WhatsApp by 1,200 percent. Fearing that a new privacy policy would be introduced on WhatsApp, many people started using signal and telegram apps as a second alternative. With this, there are indications that WhatsApp has relaxed the new privacy policy in countries including India. WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, has come out with some thought-provoking figures.
The number of WhatsApp downloads has dropped. Signal and Telegram escaped because of public protests against WhatsApp that began in January. The signal against WhatsApp was also widely campaigned for. Signal’s ads were subsequently banned by Facebook.
According to figures released by Censor Tower, a mobile app analytics company, there was a huge increase in signal and telegram installation in January. Opponents of the move came after it was officially announced that WhatsApp users’ data would also be transferred to Facebook.
In the first four months of 2021, signal downloads increased by 1,192 percent (YOY) to 64.4 million worldwide. At the same time, Telegram’s installations increased 98 percent to 161 million, according to Censor Tower figures. However, in the four months from January to April, the number of people installing WhatsApp globally dropped by 43% to 172.3 million.
Signal installations in January rose 5,001 percent to 50.6 million. It had 992,000 installations during the same period last year. However, after the increase in January, the average installation continued, although the number of installations of the signal decreased each month. Censor Tower estimates that the signal received 2.8 million downloads globally in April. This is double the 1.3 million downloads reported in April 2020.
Similar to the signal, telegram downloads increased by 283 percent from 16.6 million to 63.5 million. However, Telegram’s downloads in April fell 3 percent to 26.2 million. It was 27 million during the same period last year.
Data released by the Censor Tower shows that signal and telegram downloads have been declining rapidly since January, despite some growth. However, in a short period of time, both these apps were able to challenge the popular app WhatsApp.