Telegram, the instant messaging app, has successfully gained 42.9% new users from its rival WhatsApp in the past three years, reports a survey on Wednesday.
Telegram is the frontrunner as the trend of using multiple messaging apps picks up in India. Signal has also gained 47 percent of WhatsApp users in the past year owing to its extra security offerings.
WhatsApp, which although is currently the leader in instant messaging platforms with more than 53 percent users in the country using it, witnessed a number of its users moving to alternative messaging platforms like Telegram and Signal on account of growing data privacy concerns pursuant to the updated Privacy policy updates announced in January this year.
Following the backlash, while WhatsApp announced the deferral of its policy update from February 8 to May 15, the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT in India asked the Facebook-owned messaging platform to roll back and not defer the policy change.
In its letter to WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart, the Indian ministry slammed its “all or nothing” approach.
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Analysts say that while WhatsApp definitely enjoys a clear first-mover advantage, users are increasingly signing up on other platforms like Telegram and Signal for unique features and better security. It is reasonable to expect the future of messaging apps in India to be pluralistic in nature.
The survey also reported that at least one in five respondents preferred Telegram over WhatsApp for varied reasons including enhanced security, respecting privacy, sharing of large-size files, features like channels, and allowance of users in a single group.
Over 32 percent of the 2000 respondents in the survey said they send critical and confidential messages over Telegram and more than 45 percent of the users said they were apprehensive about WhatsApp privacy based on recent media reports.
However, 81% of the users surveyed are still confident regarding WhatsApp’s privacy and security offered. Over 70 percent of the users said they would continue using both WhatsApp and Telegram even if WhatsApp loses its competitive advantage of most of the contacts.
