Telegram gained popularity after WhatsApp introduced a new privacy policy earlier this year. Not happy with the development, several users started looking for other messaging platforms where they can have more privacy. Telegram was one of them. Telegram was the one that benefitted the most because of the change in policy introduced by WhatsApp. While some thought it to be temporary, Telegram did manage to reap benefits for a long time. As a result, the popular instant messaging app has now joined the elite club of apps that have over 1 billion downloads globally. According to data by Sensor Tower, Telegram has now over 1 billion global downloads. Telegram was launched in late 2013. The Dubai-headquartered app crossed the milestone on August 27, said Sensor Tower. The app is giving some tough competition to its rival WhatsApp as it is growing fast in India. Also, just like WhatsApp, India is the largest market for Telegram. The Asian country is the world’s second-largest internet market. Out of total lifetime installs, 22 percent is from India, said Sensor Tower. Russia and Indonesia are at the second and third spots with around 10 percent and 8 percent of total installs respectively.
It is pertinent to mention that the app witnessed a sudden increase in the number of downloads this year reaching about 214.7 million in the first half. This is almost a 61 percent year-over-year jump when compared to last year. The number of downloads in the first half of 2020 was 133 million. But there’s a catch as the number of downloads does not mean that that app has a strong active userbase. For instance, the number of monthly active users of the app was around 500 million as of early this year. But the surge in downloads has definitely brought some attention to Telegram in the recent past. With this, Telegram has become only the fifteenth app worldwide to have touched the magical figure of 1 billion downloads. According to Sensor Tower, the other apps to achieve the milestone are WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat, Netflix, etc. It must be noted that Sensor Tower does not keep a record of most of the pre-installed apps on Android devices. So the apps which are downloaded by users on their devices are counted to prepare the list of most downloaded apps.
This is a big achievement for Telegram, which managed to raise over USD 1 billion this year. The messaging app has yet not commented on the development. Meanwhile, the company has launched its 8.0 update with some new features. Among the key changes is removing the limit on the number of live stream audiences. This essentially means that an unlimited number of viewers cans join as an audience during any live streaming. There are some upgrades for forwarding messages as well. Now users will be able to hide captions or the name of the sender while forwarding messages. The instant messaging app will now also show trending stickers. The app said that it will also make the process of picking stickers smoothen on its Android app. Telegram also said that emojis will be more animated when they are sent as an individual message. However, the biggest change appears to be that the company has quietly killed off its Wear OS app. The app is no more available on the Google Play Store. This is notable as the app was available on the Play Store as recently as last week. It won’t appear when searched using the term ‘Telegram.’ This means that the Wear OS app cannot be re-downloaded. Telegram has so far not commented on it.
