If an app falls outside the Play Store, does anyone track it?
WhatsApp mods are hugely popular in Africa, yet invisible in store stats
WhatsApp has long been the dominant messaging app across much of the Global South. Along with Facebook’s other properties, Google’s portfolio, and a handful of popular games, it’s part of a small cadre of Western apps that dominate emerging markets.
But not all apps show up on top download lists or in public reports. Users often install apps that have been shared from other devices or downloaded directly as APKs from sources outside of the official app stores. Most of these apps are relatively obscure, but there are a couple that are quite popular: They’re WhatsApp mods. And at least one of them, GBWhatsApp, is just as popular as some of the most well-known Western apps.
To understand the popularity of these clones, we analysed our current app dataset in three key African markets — Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa — comprising 230 million app sessions (opening and closing of an app) from more than 21,000 apps and more than 4,000 panelists. The results above show how dominant WhatsApp has become, with close to 90% active user rate and more than a quarter of those 230M app sessions. People use WhatsApp a lot.
So it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that its clones are also immensely popular: Across these three markets, GBWhatsApp has essentially the same user base as Twitter, with 3× the number of app sessions. In fact, GBWhatsApp has more sessions than Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat combined. These messaging sessions are short — average duration is about 9 seconds — but people use them constantly.
GBWhatsApp, YoWhatsApp, and other mods are made by independent developers who repackage WhatsApp functionality and post the app online. Users install these apps because the mods offer additional functionality that WhatsApp doesn’t, such as the ability to have multiple accounts on one device, or hiding one’s own message receipt indicators (blue tick marks) while maintaining visibility into recipients’. This allows users to surreptitiously “bluetick”[1] their friends without creating any anxiety on the other end.
“I can disable ‘last seen’ or ‘online,’ therefore you cannot see when I am online. It’s like going on flight mode but you are still on the internet.” — FMWhatsApp user, Kenya
Who uses WhatsApp mods? Like many emergent digital practices, they’re more popular with younger, male users. Almost 50% of WhatsApp mod users are <24 years old, vs. 40% for official WhatsApp. Whereas WhatsApp has basically become a utility similar to SMS, finding and installing a 3rd-party app outside the Google Play Store requires a higher level of digital literacy and perhaps risk tolerance, as doing so requires manual override of Android’s built-in warning against installing “apps from unknown sources.”
Our activity data also shows that many of the people using WhatsApp mods are multi-homing, i.e., using more than one competing version of the messaging product. Across the three markets, 24% of panelists use more than one version of WhatsApp, and 6% use three or more versions. Unsurprisingly, the multi-homing population trends even younger, and even more male.
While the vast majority of app usage in sub-Saharan Africa is with official apps (typically, Western; despite big pushes in Africa the Chinese superapps have yet to gain significant traction), the popularity of WhatsApp mods is a strong reminder that market dynamics in the Global South create different digital ecosystems. Specifically, distribution is more fragmented, such that traditional bottlenecks such as Google Play (content) and mobile operators (devices) are less powerful than in many Western markets. Some of this is cost-driven (e.g., flash-sharing media and apps to avoid data costs of download), some is due to institutional structures (e.g., financial exclusion driving prepaid accounts), and some of it is the technology platforms themselves (e.g., Google restricting developers in many African countries from monetizing via the Play Store).
But the end result is that understanding digital economies in Sub-Saharan Africa is different than in the West, and requires localized research methods and datasets that can capture the complexity and nuance of each market.
About Caribou Data
Caribou Data provides quantified insights into market trends and consumers’ digital behavior in emerging economies. Through representative panels of anonymous users, we construct comprehensive, 360-degree pictures of consumers’ digital activity and behaviors, with insights across apps, platforms, networks, and financial transactions. Built on a commitment to individual privacy, transparency in how we handle data, and fairness in how we compensate our panelists, Caribou Data analytics are always effectively anonymous and GDPR-compliant. Learn more on our website.
[1] “Blue ticking” is to read a message but not respond immediately, so named because the sender of the message sees the blue ticks indicating their message has been read, but doesn’t get a response. In common usage: “I messaged you 5 times! Why are you blue ticking me?!”
