Brazil: usage of selected mobile messaging apps 2018-2023

Approximately 99 percent of smartphone owners surveyed in Brazil in February 2023 said they had WhatsApp installed on their mobile devices. Instagram and Facebook Messenger ranked second and third, as 87 percent and 68 percent of respondents claimed to have the two Meta's applications on their devices. Meanwhile, 65 percent of interviewees claimed to have Telegram on their phones, up from 60 percent on the previous year. Furthermore, 13 percent of smartphone users in that South American country stated that they had the Signal app on their devices.

‘Zapzap’ as a lifestyle

The use of WhatsApp in Brazil – where the app is often nicknamed ‘zapzap’ – spans beyond the realm of texting. Whereas the share of Brazilian smartphone owners who send SMS text messages declined, most WhatsApp users utilized the app to exchange text and voice messages, besides images. It also serves as a sales channel for small and medium-sized enterprises. About one out of five catalogs on the spin-off app WhatsApp Business worldwide were based in Brazil as of February 2021.

WhatsApp’s competition gets tighter

This app kept a stable penetration rate in Brazil in the past few years, but Telegram and Signal are trending up. Still, competitors of WhatsApp have a long way to go: less than half of Telegram users surveyed in Brazil in 2021 said they used the app daily or almost daily, while almost 20 percent of them stated that they never or almost never utilize it.