Proliferation of messaging apps used on a daily basis has increased the use of overall mobile apps in 2013 by up to 115%. A plethora of apps has left the desktop far behind and the trend of using Mobile is on a rise. Offering different features in the Mobile space, Messaging apps played an important role to grab the user’s attention and even helped push the market for other apps.
According to Flurry’s  new report titled Mobile Messaging App Usage 2012 – 2013, from 2012 to 2013 the use of Mobile has increased to 115%. Different messaging applications have led to the beginning of a new trend and has involved the users significantly. Whereas  other applications have also shown quite an enormous growth. Reports say that social apps have also contributed towards acquiring user’s attention.  If we analyze Mobile usage penetration based on different applications, it is highest in Messaging & social apps and Utilities & Productivity have shown growth rates of 203 and 149 percent respectively. While other apps like Music & Entertainment, Lifestyle, Shopping and Games have performed better with 78 , 77 and 66 percent respectively.
However, the growth of the Messaging and Social Apps has overshadowed all other applications. Apps paved out to connect with various users around the globe. In the segment of Messaging Apps there are numerous competitors looking to grab the opportunity created for their own profit. Messenger Apps such as Whatsapp, Wechat, KakaoTalk, Line, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat surprisingly attracted much more daily based users than any other apps.
No doubt Whatsapp is becoming one of the most used messenger apps which automatically add contacts, is highly customizable and quite easy to use but the Korea owned and Japan based Line is also collecting great revenue and becoming one of the most used messenger apps in Japan  and widely used in Taiwan, Spain, Thailand , South America and recently launched in India, accounting for more than 300 million user s on a daily basis. Line gives some outstanding features such as free calls, voice messages etc.
Similarly We Chat also influenced its user with it’s video calls, audio clips, live chat apart from sending text, location data and contact details. We Chat has more than 400 million registered user but only around 100 million users outside China. Whereas lagging in the messaging service, Facebook also launched its Facebook Messenger for fast retrieval of messages. But monetization of becoming a messenger app is just one of the consequences of better competition in the messaging apps category. Although in comparison to other apps, facebook is outperforming others. BBM has also registered for 80 million users. Here is some data related to the active monthly users of these apps.
It’s quite interesting to see that these messaging apps fascinated users in the previous year and this can be attributed to the mobile phones. Various messenger apps are quite easy to install and use, various features available which sound good to the users, also counterpart their rivals. The intriguing fact is that whether these apps will be considered by users in the present year or whether 2014 will showcase a new level of scalability and other apps lagging behind, will give up their positions and become more lucrative than these apps by attracting users. As we can see the last year was quite explosive for the use of mobile apps, and the overall figures were enormous. This Figures gives rise to the curiosity – “What levels monetization will be seen in the upcoming years?”.
