Indians Sent 20 Billion WhatsApp Messages On New Year's Eve

Imran Fazal - Jan 10, 2020

In total, global WhatsApp users sent over 100 billion messages, breaking all previous records. The app has more than 40 crore users in India.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp revealed that all previous records of messages being sent in a single day were broken on New Year's Eve. Over 100 billion messages were sent on 31st December 2019 across the globe, out of which 20 billion messages were sent by Indians. It has to be noted that WhatsApp has over 40 crore users in India. Out of 100 billion messages, 12 billion were picture messages sent to friends and family members with New Year wishes.

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WhatsApp confirmed that in the past 10 years of its launch, 31st December 2019 saw the highest number of messages being sent and received. It has become the only messaging application in the world to be used with such a huge user base in a single day. In a statement released by WhatsApp on Blogspot, the private messaging app said that in 24 hours till midnight of New Year's Eve, a record was broken in terms of the number of messages being sent via the private messaging app across the globe.

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It also clarified that the data of messages being sent and received by users were of end-to-end encryption and the messages can be read only by the people communicating with each other. It also said that the messages can't be read even by WhatsApp. It said that it can be fair enough to assume that most of the messages sent on 31st December were more of wishing each other 'Happy New Year.'

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In separate news, WhatsApp announced that from February 1, 2020, its services will no longer be available for Android devices running Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and lower as well as on iOS devices that run an OS version lower than iOS 9. WhatsApp has asked its users to upgrade their phone versions to continue using its services. This attempt is to enhance the servers and to provide further features to its users. However, this move will not affect the user base of the messaging application. A thorough study revealed that most of the users have upgraded versions of Android and iOS devices.