WhatsApp growth slumps as rivals Signal, Telegram rise
Encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram are seeing huge upticks in downloads from Apple and Google’s app stores. Facebook-owned WhatsApp, by contrast, is seeing its growth decline following a fiasco that forced the company to clarify a privacy update it had sent to users.
Mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower said on Wednesday that Signal saw 17.8 million app downloads on Apple and Google during the week of January 5 to January 12. That is a 61-fold increase from just 285,000 the previous week. Telegram, an already-popular messaging app for people around the world, saw 15.7 million downloads in the January 5 to January 12 period, roughly twice the 7.6 million downloads it saw the previous week.
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