YouTube and WhatsApp Inch Closer To Half a Billion Users in India

An anonymous reader shares a report: WhatsApp has enjoyed unrivaled reach in India for years. By mid-2019, the Facebook-owned app had amassed over 400 million users in the country. Its closest app rival at the time was YouTube, which, according to the company's own statement and data from mobile insight firm App Annie, had about 260 million users in India then. Things have changed dramatically since. In the month of December, YouTube had 425 million monthly active users on Android phones and tablets in India, according to App Annie, the data of which an industry executive shared with TechCrunch. In comparison, WhatsApp had 422 million monthly active users on Android in India last month.

Factoring in the traction both these apps have garnered on iOS devices, WhatsApp still assumes a lead in India with 459 million active users, but YouTube is not too far behind with 452 million users. With China keeping its doors closed to U.S. tech giants, India emerged as the top market for Silicon Valley and Chinese companies looking to continue their growth in the last decade. India had about 50 million internet users in 2010, but it ended the decade with more than 600 million. Google and Facebook played their part to make this happen.

Half a billion acts of manipulation and fraud.

[BAReFO0t]

Yet still nobody has hunted down the leaders and put them in front of a proper court that doesn't accept business definitions of words and morals, nor technicalities.

Here's an idea

[boudie2]

Give them their own youtube so they don't have to ruin the one we have now with their gibberish videos.

Re:

[zshXx]

Yeh, it would be great if they can avoid uneducated hill billies.

Re:

[boudie2]

At least hillbillies can speak english. Not asking for much, if the description is in English but the video is not it's just wasting everybody's time.

Good news!

[France B.]

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Huge user counts, but difficult to monetize

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Some rich folks in India spend money like its water. But most of the others are careful with money and it would be difficult to monetize the user count. Many used to simply cancel the account when the intro free-for-two-months period is up and sign up again with a different email account. May be with phones, and tracking they can crack down on this.

In India incoming phone calls are free, so they developed a sort of "missed call" etiquette. Like the employer will not pick up a call from his/her driver, ser