The messenger market is a tough one. With WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat in Asia, the market is actually divided up. Other messengers such as Threema, Snapchat, Telegram, Viber, Threema, Singal and others are currently marginal players in terms of numbers. Especially the messengers that are advertised as “secure” don’t have it easy. But there is currently some movement in the topic of “secure messengers”.
1) With the insolvency of the German messenger ‘Ginlo’ (formerly ‘SMSme’ from Deutsche Post) and the purely theoretical relocation of the messenger ‘Wire’ to the USA (programming apparently still in Berlin), the German/European market has lost two important messengers.
As bad as this development is, it can be good for ‘Threema’.
Existing users (‘Ginlo’, as far as I know, also had companies as customers of the business solution) will inevitably have to look for a replacement.
Threema’ may well experience a boost here.
https://twitter.com/ginloAPP/status/1191687308690501632
https://twitter.com/piratenparteibb/status/1195359540478455808
https://twitter.com/heiseonline/status/1195339699088441344
https://twitter.com/sozialpr/status/1195290628265054208
2) The Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of Baden-Württemberg is launching a pilot project on the topic of “Instant Messenger at schools” and is using ‘Threema’ (presumably ‘Threema Work’) for this purpose.
https://km-bw.de/,Lde/Startseite/Service/2019+11+22++Start+Pilot+Project+Instant+Messenger
3) Each Threema ID now has its own website, making it easier to share with friends.
4) Since I am increasingly being asked privately why Threema does not display push notifications on the smartphone (also speaks for the increasing distribution), here are a few possible solutions.
https://threema.ch/de/faq/push_andr
5) The company “MessengerPeople” has compiled a list including user numbers of the most popular messengers in Germany and has now also included Threema.
IMPORTANT: I know that MessengerPeople is not very popular with some Threema users. As a leading provider in the field of “WhatsApp marketing”, MessengerPeople is naturally keen to advance its “main topic” of WhatsApp marketing. That’s why it feels like 99% of the attention has been paid to this platform so far, which of course also means (in-)direct advertising for WhatsApp.
Opinions also differ on Threema’s current user numbers. MessengerPeople states the “Daily Active User” figure as 6 million in Nov. 2019.
Other sources speak of (over) 7 million users. It is important to note that the DAU figure and the pure “download figure” may differ. I also do not know the source of the figures.
Statista and Wikipedia have in December 2018! 5 million private users + 2 million “Threema Work users”.
Maybe by the end of 2019 we’ll already have 8-9 million users if you add everything up? Which might even be more German users than Telegram! We’ll see what 2020 brings. ‘Ginlo’ has/had 500,000 downloads in fall 2019. If these users switch to ‘Threema’ as a whole, there will be another boost. I think a lot will happen in 2020.
